


Urban Night Cityscape

by emphatichearts



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Cheating, F/F, F/M, Jumin route, Loneliness, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Short Chapters, strap yourselves in for a wild wild ride
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 47
Words: 44,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8807533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emphatichearts/pseuds/emphatichearts
Summary: Being married to Jumin has somehow led to you feeling lonelier than before you ever met him. His late nights at the office leave you alone at the apartment, yearning and forever waiting.When Seven, Yoosung, Zen, and Jaehee learn of this, they are determined to make you happy again. Whatever it takes.





	1. Urban Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohglories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohglories/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [day one]

It is a quiet night at the apartment.

You are alone.

Elizabeth 3rd purrs at your side. You humour her with a scratch behind the ears, eyes still fixed on the full-length windows boasting the urban cityscape below the penthouse floor that you kneel on. But you don’t care for the lights, the brilliant skyscrapers reaching for the divine, nor the tiny match-box cars, moving with the patient roving traffic.

You miss him.

His late nights at work give you a small sense of pride, for being in love with such a dedicated and devoted person. But these quiet nights at the apartment, alone, these are the very worst.

It's rare for you to leave the house at night; you don’t have many friends, and you're not one to satiate your emotions with meaningless night-life ventures either way. So you always find yourself just… waiting. Even when you know he won’t come home, with apologetic calls from Jaehee relaying how he’s still busy with approving projects, meetings, things that you know you can’t understand; even when you know so surely that the door won't open, and that you will end up alone in this designated place by the clear glass window for the whole of the night otherwise, you still can’t bear to leave. You still can’t bear to not be thinking of him, only him, waiting for him, exactly where he knows you to be.

Your phone rings, making you jump and Elizabeth 3rd meow pointedly, strutting out of the room. You feel your heart skip a hopeful beat – maybe he’s coming home after all? You feel a sinking sensation when you pick up your phone; it’s only Zen. His voice is inappropriately cheerful.

“Hey, babe! Ah wait, should I stop calling you that by now? That trust fund kid might actually hire one of his bodyguards to take me out if he knew I still call you that - so keep it secret, right?" He chuckles. "But anyway, babe, how are you? How’s Jumin?”

Your brow furrows at the final name. “Ju…min.” It’s strange that you haven’t heard your own husband’s name, even from your own lips, in so long.

“Uh…M…MC?” Zen sounds worried now, “are you alright? Is he not treating you well? If you need, I’ll come right over and talk some sense into that guy! A real gentleman wouldn’t mistreat his wife like that. Has he been abusing you!?”

You place one of your hands on the glass and lean into it, suddenly perplexed. A pale reflection of yourself appears before you, floating in the stars.

“I haven’t…seen him in four days.” It's strange, but you can feel tears welling in your eyes now. You shouldn’t be this emotional. You knew it was this way from the very start, right? Marrying the executive director of C&R International had ordained you to this. But your love for him outshines your yearning for him… doesn't it? You close your eyes.

“Four days?!” you can hear him shaking his head, “have you been out of the house at least?”

The ring on your finger glints a little in the glass when you open your eyes again. If it weren’t for the reflection, you’d feel as if you are able to fall…

“No,”

Zen makes a sound somewhere between anger and bewilderment. “MC! I can come over if you want! I can bring Luciel, Yoosung… You shouldn’t be alone like this!”

A tear falls. It looks so soft in the window’s image.

“I’m…okay…Zen…” You're about to mention that you have Elizabeth as company, but don’t want to trigger his allergy. You remember Jumin mentioning something about a cat modelling job for him. Jumin…

“You don’t sound okay. MC, I’m here for you, you know? That jerk doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you. He should be at home, loving you and doting over you, not – whatever he’s doing right now. What is he doing this late, anyway?”

“He’s at the office, signing files, and doing Swype meetings with international clients from different time zones.” The answer is robotic; you’d heard it enough times to memorise the same, blunt line, over and over again in your head.

“For four days?”

“For four days.”

“I’m coming over.”

He hangs up.

Your phone drops from your hand, and you stare at your reflection once more. You swipe your thumb across the image of your cheek. It’s your favourite kind of touch from Jumin. So soft and innocent; a pure display of protectiveness and delicate concern. It would feel as if he was able to wipe away your tears before they ever appeared. You wish you could feel it now, when the tears from your eyes can be tasted between your lips.

 

You miss him.

The doorbell rings.


	2. Geniously Hacked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guess who?

“L-Luciel?”

He knocks you into the ground with his hug.

“Honey! I missed you!”

You can’t help but smile just a little, despite the shock of his sudden appearance. Luciel always has a way of doing that.

“H-how’d you get in here, Luce? I thought Jumin –” _Jumin._ You realise just now that saying his name hurts you, physically.

“Oh, I hacked into his security servers and gave myself a full level clearance pass! Hm, now where’s my lovely Elly?”

Seven climbs off of you and looks around, smiling. He offers you his hand and pulls you up as you answer: “She’s sleeping, I think. Did you come to see her?” You feel bad for disappointing him. Seven is staring down the dark hallway that leads to Elizabeth’s room. “No, I came for you.”

His words catch you off-guard, and the backwards grin he flashes to you straight afterwards only catches you more.

“Luciel…”

“You know you can call me ‘Saeyoung’.”

He looks at you, as if admiring something precious to him. You wonder if he’s okay.

“I thought you only wanted me to call you that after you left the hacking business?”

He smiles, remembering his promise.

“You’re right about that. I only want _you_ to call me ‘Saeyoung’.”

“Oh. Saeyoung,” you repeat. The name feels easier. Saeyoung looks almost shy for a moment as he opens his mouth to speak.

“MC, I know Jumin hasn’t been home lately…”

You wince slightly at the name, but he doesn't stop speaking.

“I thought maybe I should come by every so often…to make sure you’re not alone. I mean, what are friends for, right?” He grins, so brightly. You wonder how long it’s been since someone’s smiled at you like that.

“Thank you, Seven, but I’m –”

“So I brought some movies and heaps of Honey Buddha chips! Nothing like a movie night to cheer a friend up!” he laughs cheerfully, “And I kind of needed an excuse to wind down from work, too.”

You cock your head to the side. “You do overwork yourself a lot, Seven.”

“Well, work is work! Can’t afford Honey Buddha chips if I don’t do what the boss tells me!” Ah. He’s so upbeat and lively despite everything going on in his life. You admire him so much for that, and wish you could do the same. A quiet spark in your heart prays that he’ll be able to find his brother soon, and leave the dangerous hacking business for good.

“You look distracted, MC. What’s on your mind?”

He’d taken off his backpack and started to pull out some movie titles and bags of Honey Buddha. You can’t help but smile. His backpack has a cat design on it, complete with ears and a tail. There’s a mature innocence about Seven that always makes you feel warm inside. You wish you could see him more…

For some reason, you make yourself shut those thoughts away. It’s not like they’re dangerous thoughts, are they? You can’t be so sure.

 _“I’m just…”_ you break into a bright grin, “I’m just really glad you’re here, Saeyoung!”

He jumps up and hugs you again. “Of course! I’ll always be here for you! Now come on, let’s go watch a movie!” Seven cradles a stack of BluPlays in his arms, and you hurry to help him hold the chips in yours. “I’ve got…Akiri, War Star – the original trilogy, Phantom in the Shell, Ex-Terminator, and…Hackers, although that one’s a bit on the nose, heh.”

“I really like all of them!” you say, beaming as you set the bags of chips on the table. Seven takes out Akiri and places it in the BluPlay Player, excited.

“MC, you ready?”

You bundle up some blankets and pillows together on the couch. Seven slips off his jacket and quickly joins you under the woolly blankets, holding a pillow to his chest. Your shoulders and thighs are touching. You smile shyly from the warmth you hadn’t felt in so long. You hadn’t realised how good touch really felt until now. This is nice. It wouldn't hurt to have more.

"I'm ready.”


	3. My Half

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Difficult not to touch. Even harder not to feel.

The delicate light from the city streaming in through the windows and onto the two of you on the couch is the only thing keeping you both from being shrouded in complete darkness. Neither you nor Luciel are watching the movie; your gaze is fluttering over Saeyoung’s hand, where his fingertips are gently settled on your knuckles. It’s your right hand. Your head rests on his shoulder, and his rests on top of yours. You can feel his breathing, warm and slow.

There’s a part of you that wants to close your eyes and fall asleep with him, but the other part of you wants to keep looking at his slim fingers, shyly touching you. You’d never done this with Jumin before…he doesn't like to watch movies that aren't documentaries or about something to do with the stock exchange. And he's never shy like this…he's never…so…

You feel a kiss on your forehead, through your hair. A tear you didn’t know you had unexpectedly falls from the web of your lashes. There’s a hole in your heart, and you don’t know whether the contact just now had seared it further or filled it. You find yourself embracing him out of nowhere, burying your face into his shoulder without self-control. “Saeyoung!” you say, your voice muffled through the material of his shirt.

“M-MC!” he seems shocked. He moves to take your cheeks in his hands, tenderly, looking you in the eyes carefully now, as if he’s afraid you’d disappear if he doesn’t keep looking into them. The tears in your eyes continue to flow down your cheeks, and he uses the back of his fingers to softly brush them away.

You can’t seem to find any words. The words for this. There’s something you want to say, but it’s difficult to articulate how you're feeling. There’s a flood of appreciation and admiration in your heart for this Luciel, but you know that you can’t, you can’t possibly…

Saeyoung’s slender fingers find their way to the locks of your hair, affectionately twirling the softness between his fingers in an effort to calm the both of you. “MC..." he says now, as soft as his touch, as earnest as the darkness between you, "Are you…happy? With him…?” His words are so careful and faint, as if he is afraid that the air between the two of you would break if he isn't gentle.

The question seems to break you. Not for not knowing the answer, but for the way that it leads you to wonder what Jumin’s answer to the same question would be. There’s this stubborn thought in the back of your head that worries you’ve become nothing more to Jumin than another pet, only a more annoying, higher maintenance one. You haven’t heard his voice in four days. Before that, he’d been on a business trip to Cote d’Ivoire for an entire week, something about Fair Shade cocoa or other… He’d come home for about four minutes before he was called back to the office again. Even prior to the Cote d’Ivoire trip, he was barely home, and…

“MC…” his voice brings you back to earth, to the couch and the blankets and his warm, comforting hands.

“Saeyoung, I’m…so alone…” A rush of guilt fills you at your words, but you can’t deny the truth in them.

“MC, you don’t have to be.” Saeyoung’s eyes fall to your lips for a split second, but he quickly averts his gaze and pulls you towards him, hugging you as tightly as he could without hurting you. “I’m here. I’m always here for you, MC. You know I am.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, then open them again to look down at Luciel’s back and your hand grasping at it desperately. The ring on your finger catches the light for a fraction of a moment, then dulls once more. You close your eyes again, shaking your head, still hopelessly wishing that your husband could be here for you tonight, just this once.

“I wish he’d come home…” you voice.

“I wish he’d come home to you, too. I wish you could be happy.”

He sounds sad, and you lean into his side so that your cheeks touch, so that you can feel the warmth of him closer to you. Then your eyes snap open; _'_ _no, isn’t it selfish?'_ You close your fingers over his back and pull him closer to you, so that his weight can fall on your chest.  _'Yes.'_

“Saeyoung…I’m only happy if you’re happy.” You bite your lip. “Your brother…”

You can feel his warm breath on the bare skin of your neck and shoulder as he’s still, quiet. For a moment, you wonder if he’s crying as well. His voice comes out shaky.

“I…I’m…scared…he might…hurt…”

He buries his nose into your shoulder before he can continue, and his voice is now muffled on your skin. It tickles when we talks.

“That’s…that’s not important right now… You…”

Seven pulls away from the hug to look at you again. He looks so fragile, yet somewhat resolute in the pale, glowing moonlight. His hand wipes over your cheeks to spread your tears thin. And when his hands become soaked in your sorrows, he takes your hands in his and puts it to his heart.

“You don’t have to be alone, MC,” you notice that he’s said this a lot over these past few weeks, over the phone, “I’ll stay with you until Jumin comes home.”

You exhale, looking down at your lap as you shake your head, “Luciel, he’s not coming home tonight.”

He places a quick kiss to your temple. “Then I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“Luciel…”

“I mean, what are, what are friends for, right?” A ray of light shines a bar over Saeyoung’s eyes. You see now that there are tears sparkling in them.

“Thank you…Saeyoung…” A weak smile plays on your lips, and you reach upwards, wanting to wipe the tears away from beneath his yellow glasses. You lean towards him, closer.


	4. Narcissistic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apartment feels like a home again. Zen and 707 being cute.
> 
> tw: (responsible) alcohol consumption

The doorbell rings for the second time tonight.

You immediately jump away from Seven and rush over to the door to see a beaming Zen on the other side.

“Zen, I didn’t think you’d come.” You give him a quick hug, your heart still beating from the quiet moment with Saeyoung.

“I wouldn’t miss you for the world, princess,” he flashes a smile and boops you on the nose. "Is Luciel here, too? I recognise his shoes. I was thinking maybe we can force Yoosung along, too.”

“It’s a school night,” Seven calls from the living room.

“He’s a university student, not a high schooler,” you smile, heading off to the kitchen. "D'you want anything to drink?”

“Should have asked before!” Seven runs out to the kitchen and grabs a beer from the fridge you’d just opened. “Well, if Luciel’s drinking, I am, too.” Zen says approvingly. “Woah, Zen is blaming me for his alcohol problem,” Seven teases. Zen sticks out his tongue.

“Alcohol’s bad for the skin,” you remind Zen. You feel a bit like Jaehee, but you can’t help that you’re always concerned for his health. Hell, everyone’s health in the RFA is extremely questionable. Well, everyone except…

“It’s okay; my beauty sleeps will fix anything.”

“But can it fix a dangerously large ego?!” Seven cracks open two beers and hands one to Zen.

“Well if it can fix a mental state, I’d suggest you take it up,” Zen takes a sip of his drink. "Hm, MC, are you not drinking tonight?”

“I don’t really drink…”

Zen frowns, beautifully. “Did Jumin convert you into one of those wine people? The only thing that wine is better at doing than beer is inflating his sense of elitism.”

“I spot a salt mine!”

“I’m not being salty!” Zen announces, “I’m just…Jumin, that guy…he doesn’t deserve you if he spends all of his nights at the office sipping expensive red wine instead of being here with you.”

It takes you by surprise. “Jumin’s at the office drinking?”

Zen gulps a bit, suddenly afraid that he’d said something he shouldn’t’ve, “I…he changed his cover photo on the Messenger app.”

“Oh…what did his status say?”

He pauses a bit before answering with a remorseful look: “Something about…always finding time to relax…because it makes you a better asset or – whatever. It’s just the usual obnoxious Jumin stuff, there’s nothing to read into as usual.”

You bite down on your lip, looking down, then take out a beer for yourself, letting Saeyoung open it for you before taking down a long mouthful in one go.

“MC, he’s probably stressed out all of the time. He only has a moment for his nightly rich person ritual before having to work again. If he had the option, I’m sure he’d come home and drink that overpriced grape juice with you.” Zen sounds earnest in his words, his eyes worrying over you. You feel a twinge of pain inside. You miss when Jumin used to come home the moment the clock hit seven to smile at your excitement for his return, to place you on the kitchen countertop late after nine and explain to you the different characteristics of red wine before giving you a taste of it from his lips. Your fingers subconsciously drift to your lips now, missing the contact it once had so often with its love.

Zen takes your hand and begins examining it with a gentle care. “Babe, you’ve been working too much, haven’t you? Don’t tell me you’ve been cleaning this entire apartment out while Mr Trustfundkid has been MIA.”

“I've - it's been alright... But hey, talk about a hand fetish,” you tease. He crinkles his nose in defiance, eyes closed, tongue sticking out, and you can't help but smile with deep affection at how gracefully charming he could be, even when he's joking around like this. Joking around for you. Maybe he's even _most_ charming like this... His expressions are always so indulgent and warm, and you can never help but melt at his warmth when his hands... You quickly stop yourself thinking and look away before you could end up staring too long. You shake your head in a last attempt to clear it. “Uh - I’ve been really bored lately…so cleaning’s the only thing I can do that feels fruitful around here.”

Zen sighs; a beautifully melodic sigh, and pats you with adoration. You bow your head, unable to help yourself, and he massages his fingers through your hair, sighing again. “Way too good for that jerk.”

You stick your tongue out at him. Zen touches your cheek.

“Gosh, MC, you have to stop being so cute. I’m so hungry right now I might just eat you up." He says it so casually that you instantly feel a redness in your cheeks and a flutter in your heart. It’s been a while since someone had made you feel that way.

“Zen, there are children here!” Seven protests loudly.

“Ah, alas, I’ll just have to cure my hunger with something homemade, then. I’m not the greatest cook, but how do you feel about late night grilled cheese sandwiches?”

You grin. “I’ll feel like you’re a genius because I'd love one right now.”

“Then, it’s decided! Your lovely Zen will put on an apron and make you the best grilled sandwich you’ll ever have!”

“Me too, right?” Seven pipes up.

“Everybody gets a sandwich!” Zen announces to the kitchen in an Oprah-ly fashion.

You laugh loudly.

Zen stops, a sudden hushed silence taking over at your outburst, his eyes falling soft on you. He smiles.

“I haven't heard that cute little laugh in far too long.”


	5. Bebop Jazz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chef Zen at your service!
> 
> tw: shirtless zen

Zen puts his fingers to his chin, feigning contemplation.

“Hm, is it hot in here or is it just –” “Take your shirt off.”

 _Oh no._ Zen looks at Seven and flashes another grin. _Oh no._ “I guess not even Luciel is immune to my charms,” he stops and sighs a little, “my handsome face and perfect body are such curses…”

“Take your shirt off!”

“Well, I guess if you insist, Luciel, I am a slave to these commands.” He smiles at you before pulling off his white v-neck, and you suddenly feel like you need to cover your eyes lest the sight of him shirtless leaves you a mess, but –  _gosh, you can’t help but admire the perfect symmetry and sharpness of his abs. The pale skin, the contrast of shadows, the beads of sweat that surely should be illegal –_ You turn to Seven, who is now shamelessly drooling over Zen’s half-naked body. “Why do all of my friends have to be so damn attractive?” he says as he leans back on the kitchen countertop and takes a dejected sip of beer, eyes closed.

Zen shakes his head, “I can’t help how I was born—” he throws on a frilly white apron with a graceful flourish “—but I  _can_  help how I cook!”

“He’s a gift from God,” you whisper, high-pitched. “Amen,” Seven affirms.

After making four grilled cheese sandwiches – Seven had been adamant on getting two – Zen places them all on a plate and turns to you. “Would you like to taste test?” he asks, glowing. You nod your head, and without warning, Zen picks you up and places you gently on the kitchen countertop so that your legs can swing off the edge. He takes one of the sandwiches in his perfect hands, and looks at you surely with his bright red eyes. You must be red as a beet.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

You close them.

“Open your mouth,” he says.

You part your lips.

“Ah, such a good girl. Now careful; it’s hot.”

You feel the sandwich being gently pushed between your lips, and then you taste it. It’s warm and the bread is a soft texture on your tongue. You bite down and chew. Zen had put an overly generous amount of cheese in it, but the warmth feels so good that you want it to fill you even more.

“Mm!” You smile, feeling happy. But there’s still a tug at your heartstrings when you think about the last time Jumin had cooked for you. You think about him far too often, you realise, but you know that there’s no cure for this love, is there? The memory of his strawberry pancakes…he’d make them the morning after particularly heated nights. He’d said that they were the pinnacle of romantic breakfast foods, according to a magazine he'd read the other day. You still wonder what kind of magazines he reads, since you’ve only ever spotted him reading books. Another warmth fills you when you remember seeing him reading volume four of ‘Expert Playboy’. He’d told you he was reading it for research. You’d wanted to kiss him so badly then…

“Cheese everywhere,” you hear Zen’s voice say. You open your eyes to realise his fingers are on your lips, brushing off sandwich debris. You feel your cheeks go red again, and you quickly avert your gaze towards your lap, feeling guilty for how his fingers feel on you.

He smiles, “would you like a kiss with that, too?”

“Woah, MC, I wish he’d kiss me, too.”

You decidedly slip off the countertop and move to put the dish into the dishwasher. “It’s…getting late,” you say bluntly, looking away.

“Hm. I guess I do have rehearsals early tomorrow. Seven, you’ll keep her company tomorrow, right?” Seven scratches his head sheepishly. “Uh, the boss wants me to take care of something really important tomorrow, so I’ll be gone all day.”

You try to smile despite the reminder of loneliness looming over you. Zen notices your expression and touches your cheek. “Don’t worry; I’ll call Yoosung. He’s not me, but I’ll make sure he’s good to you. That boy’s never busy, at least.”

“It’s a school night tomorrow, too!!” Seven exclaims as he picks up his catpack and swings it over his shoulder.

“He’s not a kid, you know,” you say with a smile.

Saeyoung throws you a backwards devilish grin, “And he’ll prove that to you in the next chapter.”

“What?”

“Uh – nothing! Come on, Zen, I’ll drive you home in my baby.”

Zen catches up to Luciel at the door. “I’m not getting into that thing if you keep calling it that.”

“Can you get into me?”

You find yourself smiling at the two. Their banter always cheers you up. You walk to the door and put your hand on the doorknob. “Thank you both…for being here.” You know that half their jokes and jabs at each other were in an effort to cheer you up. You try to grin widely, at least for them.

Zen smiles at you and kisses your cheek, then takes your hand and kisses it, too. “The pleasure is mine, princess.”

“Ah, what a gentleman! How should I kiss you, MC?” Luciel cocks his head to the side for a bit. “Oh! I know!” He grins proudly, takes your hand, and lightly bites your knuckles with a soft sound of approval. “They say pain is love! Now, adios! And also be careful of men in disguises!”

Zen flicks his ear in protest at that, and Seven pokes his tongue out in retaliation before turning to follow him down the hallway, both disappearing.

You smile as you close the door, leaning your back onto it with the warmth still growing in your chest. For a moment, you don’t feel so alone. Then your eyes flicker to the window, and with a mournful look at the lights of the urban cityscape below, you know full well exactly where you’ll be sitting, and who you’ll be thinking of, for the rest of this long, quiet night at the apartment.


	6. [Yoosung & MC]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filler chapter -- First part is Yoosung's POV [in 3rd person]. It's set on day 4 of the game, after the chat 'Stay healthy!' [not much significant about the chat; it just happens to be a private one between you and Yoosung]. Second part [after the ~] is your POV [in 2nd person]. It's set a few weeks or a month after the wedding with Jumin, but at least a month before this fic takes place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: All chapters with titles [in brackets] are set in the past! They're filler chapters because I have no self control.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading up to now! Please enjoy, I love you!

**Yoosung, Day 4 of MM after 'Stay Healthy' Chatroom [see summary]**

Yoosung exits his Messenger app and drops his phone beside his pillow before collapsing back into his bed, covering his face with his hands.

“It’s hopeless,” he says, his voice muffled through his fingers, “I like her so much.”

She had only joined the RFA for a couple of days…but his heart always beats faster whenever he talks to her, and he can’t help but check his phone every few minutes, even while playing LOLOL. He keeps wondering how she is at odd hours of the day. He’d be in an economics lecture listening to his professor drone on about community markets and suddenly he’d be wondering if it’d be humid in Rika’s apartment that day, and then he’d start thinking about the difficulty level in installing an air conditioner there by himself, and how much it would cost to buy one depending on the home electronic market’s status. Either way, his thoughts would all get ahead of themselves and he’d end up wanting to call her just in case she happened to need a Bitsumishi Electric - 2.5kW/3.2kW Reverse Cycle Inverter Split System Air Conditioner installed in her room, because he was already on the checking out page on the website.

He sighs. _But she’s getting along so well with Jumin, though…_ Yoosung definitely isn’t the type to interfere with a good relationship. She seems so happy whenever Jumin is in the chat, and she laughs at all of his weird jokes. _She laughs at my jokes, too…_

He opens his eyes for a moment, and when the ceiling light floods over him, he closes them again. He’d just thought about how she had called him Super Yoosung in the chat before. His chest feels so light and warm just thinking about it. She’s always so encouraging. So kind and cheerful and understanding towards him. He puzzles over how it is possible for him to feel so much for someone he’s never even met. He wonders how she looks like for a second, then shakes off the thought. _It doesn’t matter what she looks like,_ he thinks to himself _, she’s already beautiful._

“Am I being too cheesy?” he asks himself, suddenly worried, “owh…how am I ever going to tell her how I feel if I keep acting like this…” Yoosung sits up and pulls his knees close to his chest, not feeling so super anymore. _I wonder if she likes me, too…_

A sound pops up from his computer, and Yoosung turns to look at it for a moment. His guild is asking him to join the raid. Yoosung falls back onto his bed again, his arms clasped to his heart. He’d made his decision: he won’t play LOLOL tonight. He’ll sleep now and wake up early tomorrow to talk to her instead.

~

**MC, one month before Day 1 of UNC**

You look at your Messenger app, checking your texts again before getting into the passenger seat of the car. Yoosung had just messaged you –

“I’m on the bus! Heading there now!”

A smile spreads across your face, excited to see him again. But your excitement halts for a moment as your heart skips a beat in worry – _would it be wrong to go?_ Jumin is working late again today, and you’d already told him about it, so it should be alright? …Right?

_Well, you never really mentioned the part about your old crush on –_

“The traffic is a bit bad today, Mrs Han. I apologise if we get there late.” Driver Kim looks at you apologetically.

“Oh! Um, that’s okay! It’s not your fault, Driver Kim! It’s best to drive safely no matter the circumstances!” You smile nervously at him and he smiles back before going back to his driving.

Your face flushes pink the moment Driver Kim turns away. _Did he see it in my face?_ Your fingers drift to your cheeks, quietly scolding yourself for being so emotionally transparent. _Stop thinking about Yoosung_ , you say to yourself, thinking about Yoosung.

You sigh. Maybe this day at the beach might not be quite so alright after all if your face keeps speaking your most private thoughts.


	7. Fresh Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A touch of old familiar warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [day two]

It’s a cloudy day out today.

You look up at the sky and take a deep breath of air. It feels good to breathe in. You feel a bit dazed thinking about how long it’s been since you’d gone outside. For a moment, you puzzle over why you hadn’t left the apartment in so long. Then you remember that you never really _needed_ to leave it back then; Jumin was always home with you... _Was_. He was so indulgent, declaring that everything you would ever need would be in that apartment, all for you. But you need him now...

“MC!”

Yoosung’s voice calls to you from the other side of the park, and your heart jumps for a second at the sound of your name. When you turn to look at him, you see him beginning to run over to meet you, beaming and bright. He looks so buoyant, so faultlessly cheerful, and suddenly you feel all of the morosity in your chest melt away, replaced with a warmth only this feeling could bring. You’d missed Yoosung, too.

You run as well, meeting him halfway and, upon reaching him, you raise both your hands towards him as he mirrors your action, your hands meeting and fingers intertwining. You flutter at the old familiar touch. “I missed you so much, Yoosung!” you call out, unable to stop yourself. He chuckles at you and waves your hands around playfully, eyes twinkling.

It might be a cloudy day out today, but with Yoosung, it always feels so bright.

“Hey, I missed you, too! You look really nice today!” Your cheeks immediately tinge pink at his compliment. He smiles assuringly at your expression and twirls you around, your hands still interlaced for a moment after you pause. Holding Yoosung’s hand, his fingers tangled in yours, makes you want to hold him completely, and to be held by him too, close and cared for… But your wrists shake, and you have to let go before your feelings could begin to envelop you.

You remember, now, why it had been so long since you had last spent time with Yoosung. You had been out with him one day a long while ago, and after returning home, you had immediately begun to excitedly recount your day at the beach to Jumin. He had smiled at your detailed report but, when he turned away from you, he’d looked distractedly perplexed…and somewhat sad. He pulled you into his lap that night, and asked you what you wanted from him. When you said that you only wanted him, he had kissed your neck and promised you the world instead. He used to hold you so much. You miss holding him back. And now he won’t even call…

Your thoughts slowly melt away as you feel Yoosung softly pinching your cheeks with a concerned pout. “You’ve got that look again, MC.”

You blink. “What look?” you ask, putting your hands over his, the back of his hand soft under your fingers. You stare at him with inquisitive eyes.

“It’s…that lamenting look…you look like that whenever you’re thinking of something sad.” He frowns a bit and carefully brushes a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. You’re still touching his hands. There’s something foreign about Yoosung’s touch, you realise. Something too gentle and undemanding for you to recognise…

 “MC, have you been…lonely?” Yoosung is suddenly shy. You drop your hands from his, turning to look down at your feet.

“It-it’s okay to be…lonely.” It’s strange to see Yoosung acting nervous again, like how he used to be during the early days on the Messenger app. “Jumin –” _Jumin_. You wince. Yoosung looks panicked all of a sudden, and he quickly pulls you to his chest, his arms wrapped around your back.

“I-I’m sorry…MC…” He rests his chin on your head. He’s…warm. You notice that your tears are wetting his shirt. You feel that you should pull away, but…you never realised how much you’d wanted to hold him until he had held you first. You don’t want to leave his warmth.

“Yoosung,” you say with your best attempt at cheerfulness.

“Yes?” You can hear the caring definity in his word. You look up at him, still pressed against his body. “Can we go to the beach?” Your voice wavers a little, but it feels right to express how you feel.

You wonder if Yoosung would scoff at you. It’s not really beach weather.

He smiles, with a small sound of affirmation. He takes one of your hands, still holding you, and squeezes it softly.

“Mm. Let’s go to the beach, MC.”


	8. Fresher Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's sunset. His eyes say night.
> 
> tw: w e t t

It was already rather dark by the time the two of you had arrived at the beach. Yoosung had wanted to call a taxi, but you’d asked if he'd mind walking instead. Your conversation with him as you walked through the city was so fun and absorbing that you didn’t even realise almost two hours had passed until you were watching the sun begin to set as you removed your shoes and stepped onto the sand.

You sit beside him now, where the ocean kisses the sand. The water brushes against your toes, and your shoulder rubs against Yoosung’s, the friction keeping the both of you warm. It’s breezy right now, and with the grey clouds in the sky, the two of you are the only ones peculiar enough to be at the beach at this hour, in this weather.

“Are you cold, MC?” he asks you, wrapping his arm around your shoulders upon which his long-sleeve is draped. You look up at him and shake your head. “You’re warm,” you reply. And he’s warmer than the sun setting into the liquid horizon.

The smell of the waves, carried by the wind, brings a sense of serenity to your heart and mind. You know it was silly of you to suggest coming here when it’s so cold, but it feels…so right, to be here, with him, right now, where the ocean kisses the sand and the water brushes against your toes and the friction keeps the both of you warm and his shirt is draped over you and his arm is wrapped around your shoulders.

You’re so thankful for Yoosung.

“Do you remember the last time we went to the beach?” you ask him, smiling at the thought. He smiles, too, the sunset casting a pale warm light on his skin.

“I do,” he says fondly, “I remember it was so hot that the sand burned our feet and we had to run into the water really fast. You ran so fast you fell head-first into the water. I had to pull you up and your hair was soaking wet.” Yoosung chuckles at the memory and tousles your hair lovingly.

You pout at him, an embarrassed blush upon your cheeks. “I wasn’t thinking of that part,” you mumble, averting your gaze back to the sun. Yoosung stops laughing and playing with your hair, quiet for a moment, before wrapping his other arm around you, too. His cheek is pressed against your temple.

“I remember.”

You turn to him, and your nose brushes against his chin. _Does he really?_ That day at the beach…the two of you were standing waist-deep in the water, the sun glistening in the water droplets flecked across his skin. He looked at you, and you’d never seen his eyes so bright before. His hands were on your shoulders, having just saved you from the water. He had looked at you a certain way as you both stood there, half burning in the sun and half cooled by the water. You know you were looking at him differently, then, too…

“We were looking…at each other…” Yoosung says softly, barely above a whisper. He moves so that you’re looking at each other now, only centimetres apart. “I’d wanted to…”

His hand grazes your cheek, pushing a lock of hair from your face. The way he looks at you right now makes your heart beat faster than before. It’s his eyes. His violet eyes are the stars.

Your eyelids begin to fall, and you feel his breath against your skin. Your lips part. Yoosung’s voice is so quiet that it feels as if his words are meant for no one in the universe but you.

“I’d wanted to…”

“…tell you how cute you looked!” Yoosung pulls back, suddenly grinning brilliantly and tousling your hair again. “You’re so adorable when you’re wet, MC! Uh – I mean, you’re adorable…always!” He laughs gingerly, his toes digging into the sand.

You’re shocked for a moment, but the next, you breathe a heavy sigh of relief. _That was close._ You remind yourself of Jumin. Of your husband whom you love so dearly. Who you _chose_. Your heart aches a little at the memory of his touch. He had always felt like the perfect route for you. Always…

“Yoosung!” you shout abruptly. A clasp of thunder accompanies your outburst, followed by a heavy flood of rain. You are both quickly soaked. “Ah – _Yoosung!_ ” you cover your head with your hands, not quite helping against the rain.

“Oh. You’re wet again, MC!”

“ _Yoosung!_ ”


	9. Silly Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> domestic.
> 
> tw: o shitnipple

Yoosung grabs your hand and pulls you up, looking ready to speed off into the distance with you trailing behind. You grab your shoes and look nervously at your sand-covered feet.

“Uh, Yoosung, my feet are a bit – _UHP!_ ”

“The rain will clean them! Let’s go!”

You blink at how fast he is able to pick you up and start running. Yoosung’s astonishing ability to dash through the rain while carrying you in his arms bridal-style might just be the most surprising development of the week.

“How are you so fast? I’m heavy!” you call out, worried.

He looks down to quickly flash a sunshiney grin at you before looking back up ahead, his steps splashing in the puddles now strewn across the pavement.

“You’re perfect!” he says.

His face is so bright it might just blind you.

 

You’re sitting at Yoosung’s computer, LOLOL on the screen. You’re wearing Yoosung’s pyjama top and a pair of Yoosung’s boxers, a handtowel around your neck with your hair still dripping from the shower you’d just had in Yoosung’s bathroom. You feel a bit nervous being here, but at least repeatedly clicking on low-level enemies on the beginner’s island in LOLOL is distracting you enough to take your mind off of it for the time being.

“I made some matcha tea!”

Yoosung walks in, wearing a loose tee and shorts. He’d just had a shower, too, and your eyes can’t help but begin to wander across his skin at their own accord. His shoulders are so…you gulp. “Oh – uh, I love matcha tea!” you say, very quickly, very nervously. You blink several times and accept the mug with thanks, which has a LOLOL character on it. _So cute…_ The tea is hot, but you take a few quick gulps so that you don’t have to meet his eyes again. _Did he notice me staring?_

His soft hand falls onto yours and gently takes the cup from you, setting it onto his desk. “Careful; you’re going to burn your tongue.” He smiles warmly. Then his eyes suddenly widen. “MC, your character’s going to get killed!”

He quickly leans over your shoulder and takes the mouse, clicking rapidly. “If you’re not careful, you might – oh.” He turns, noticing that you’re staring at him. Your faces are too close. Neither of you seem to be planning to move back.

“Um…MC…your hair is still wet.” He slowly straightens and picks up the towel around your shoulders, wrapping it around your hair. The soft touch tickles your spine. “Uhm! Yoosung, it’s okay, I can –”

“It’s alright,” he chuckles, “I used to do this for my little sister all the time when we were little.” He massages the towel into your hair. You can’t help but close your eyes. His hands are so gentle and soft…

“Hey…I had a lot of fun today…” Yoosung says. It’s the first time hearing him sound nervous since what feels like forever. _He’s so cute…_

“Me, too…” you lean your head back, and a soft purr involuntarily escapes from your lips. _Shit._ You straighten, suddenly embarrassed. He chuckles at you, making your cheeks burn even warmer.

“Oh, MC, your clothes should be out of the dryer soon. I called a taxi before; it should be here any minute.”

You bite your lip. “ _I don’t wanna go home tonight…_ ” you mumble.

“Huh? What was that?”

“N-nothing!”

You feel like his chuckle is something you’re going to have to get used to from now on. But for some reason you don’t think that you’d mind that much…

“All dry!” he announces. He leans over your shoulder again. “Hm, you really are bad at this, MC. Maybe we can play Prong, instead…”

“Stop teasing me,” you whine, spinning around in his swivel chair. Yoosung is still leaning over, and your foreheads touch. _Bad move._ You bite your lip. His eyes are so bright. His smile is so warm. When you look down, you can see his bare chest through his loosely hanging shirt. There are a few droplets of water running down his body. _Too much too much too much._

“ _Yoosunggg…please, your shirt is…too low…_ ”

“You’re so cute,” he pinches your cheek with a sweet smile. _Dammit_.

“Gah…” You reach out to push him away, but your hand reaches his abdomen and – you didn’t expect him to be so hard…

“Ah…MC, why are you –” _Dammit dammit dammit._

You lean forward and kiss him. _So soft..._ His hands drift to your face, and your other hand falls to his abdomen, too. You lean deeper into him, your mouths opening, your tongues meeting, your – _dammit dammit dammit._ You push him backwards, moving with him until he falls to the floor, his back hitting his bedframe. You’re kneeling between his legs now, your hands travelling under his shirt…

“MC!” Yoosung yanks you back by the shoulders, the exchanged saliva now dribbling down his mouth. He’s blushing hard, eyes helpless and watery, shirt falling off of one of his shoulders. He looks just as vulnerable as you feel. From your blurred vision and heated cheeks, you can tell that your expression mirrors his. You can almost hear your heartbeats racing together. _It’s so scary, but with Yoosung here, it’s…_

You kiss him again, harder this time, more needy. It’s not that you just miss being touched; it’s just that Yoosung’s touch is so important to you right now. You want to drink him all up and…

The dryer beeps. Your clothes are done.

“Ah –” You both pull away at the same time.

“You should –”

“I should –”

You shoot upwards and run out of the room, heading for the dryer. Your entire body is hot, your mouth still tasting of Yoosung. _Dammit dammit dammit._ You grab your clothes. You open the door. You run for the taxi. You run from your feelings. You run for your life.

_Dammit._

_Dammit._

 

**_Dammit._ **


	10. Practicalism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Office love <3
> 
> tw: i love jaehee so much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [day three]

There was no second thought to this. You jab the ‘77’ key with a shaky hand. It’s empty in the elevator, but the feeling of claustrophobia and anxiety fills you more than ever.  _ I have to do this _ , you repeat over and over in your head,  _ I have to see him before it all falls apart. _

The elevator dings and you step out onto the office floor, into the waiting room to see – wait. “Jaehee?” You stand above her, head cocked to one side.

Jaehee sheepishly looks up at you from the chaise lounge she’s lying down on. She looks drained. “Did I wake you?” you ask gently, frowning as you run your fingers affectionately through her hair. Petting her usually comforts Jaehee when she’s stressed. She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again.

“Am I dreaming?”

“Not quite.”

You remove her glasses, folding them and placing them on the coffee table. “Jaehee, do you know when Jumin’s going to be free next?” You sit on the ottoman beside her, resting your elbows on the chaise. Jaehee sits up a bit, rubbing her eyes. “I wish I knew, too. His schedule has changed without my knowing… Mr Han has been even busier than usual these days. I’ve been needing to get these projects approved all day now, but he set a rule this week saying that I’m not allowed to enter his office when the doors are closed…”

The two of you instinctively turn your heads to Jumin’s office doors, which are shut like the doors to some forbidden palace. You wonder if that makes Jumin the final boss character.  _ Well… _

“How long does he usually take?” you ask, still gazing distractedly at the doors.

“Well…according to his patterns this past week, he should be held up for another half hour at the least.”

“Half an hour…” you mumble.  _ After almost a week, what could another half hour do?  _ You sigh and lean forward, burying your face into Jaehee’s stomach in grievance. She immediately reacts, twitching uncontrollably at the contact. “Gah – MC…that…tickles…”

You shake your head, still resting on Jaehee’s abdomen, thinking about what on earth you’re going to tell Jumin when you see him.  _ Do I ask him why he hasn’t called? Do I let him know that Elizabeth 3 _ _ rd _ _ hasn’t been eating properly? Do I – _

“This is inappropriate…” Jaehee protests, albeit not making any move to push you off.

“Nng, you’re my friend, Jaehee, comfort meee.”

_ Do I tell him about the kiss? _

You shoot upwards, your face suddenly flushed – you moved up too fast; your balance fails, the ottoman slips, you’re falling and –

“MC!”

Jaehee catches you by the wrists and, in one fluid motion, pulls you onto the chaise lounge to lie beside her. It’s in moments like these that you are reminded that Jaehee is an accomplished judoka. It’s also in moments like these that you are reminded of how much Jaehee has to put up with you all of the time.

“Thanks, Jaehee…” you say, embarrassed now. It’s Jaehee’s turn to sigh. She pulls you close into a hug, patting your back softly. “Is this the right way to comfort someone…?” She sounds a little unsure, her eyes closed.

“It works for me.”

You nestle your cheek by Jaehee’s collarbone, appreciating the softness of her.  _ About the kiss… _ You close your eyes. At least you can count on Jaehee to keep you company, right? You’re both girls, so there shouldn’t be any problem with the two of you being close like this. You wrap an arm around Jaehee, liking the warm touch.

“MC, you’re warm and cuddly like a cat…except prettier and a lot less trouble,” Jaehee murmurs into your hair. You feel yourself smile. “Maybe that’s the reason why Jumin married me.”

You both open your eyes to look at each other, and then burst out laughing.

“I do  _ not _ want to know what goes on in the bedroom between the two of you,” Jaehee says amid laughter.

“The amount of  _ times _ I’ve had to fight away the cat ears is ridiculous,” you choke on your laughter, which only makes you and Jaehee laugh even more.

Remembering the serious face Jumin had had when he was holding out the cat ears for you invokes a strong feeling of yearning within you, but seeing the corners of Jaehee’s eyes crease in laughter helps you to overcome the pain with a little bit of happiness.

“Mr Han  _ is _ one to take inspiration from the things he reads and watches. I wonder how  _ you _ feel about it all.” Jaehee smiles and pets you fondly. You melt at the touch.

“Heh…” you think about it for a moment, “I think I miss him so much I might just say yes to it next time.”

Jaehee’s smile grows sad, sympathising with you. Then she furrows her brow, an earnest look on her face. “I’m going to get Mr Han out of that office and back home to you if it kills me.”

Your eyes widen. You’d never seen Jaehee looking quite so determined, but the look on her face is so lovable that you can’t help but pet her again.

“You’re so delightful, Jaehee.” You smile at her, and suddenly you hear the sound of a door opening and high heels clacking against the floor. You look up to see who it is.

_ Ah? _


	11. The Cityscape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's okay
> 
> tw: D:

You roll on top of a frowning Jaehee in order to catch a glimpse of the tall, slim figure.

“MC –”

“Shh!”

And the first things you notice are her eyes.

Precisely slanted; a warm, doting brown with empyreal flecks of green adorning her large pupils. It’s the first thought you have of her: _she looks happy_. For a moment, her look of contentment makes you somehow feel happy, too, but then you notice her messed-up hair, as if the glossy black waves had been dishevelled only moments ago.

And her shiny red lipstick, smudged slovenly across her chin. It’s then that your eyes find her fingers, with deep purple nail polish, fumbling with the buttons of her shirt that is hanging half open. Her tight pencil skirt is askew, and as she adjusts it back, you see a distinctive smile on her face that reads a hushed, secret satisfaction.

Your heart is wringing in your chest.

_Why was she…_

You feel Jaehee wriggling out from under you to turn to the girl, too

_…in Jumin’s office?_

The ding of the elevator tells you that the visitor is gone. You roll off of Jaehee, and land with a loud, singular thud on the floor. Jaehee calls out your name but it sounds too blurred to be present. The chandelier lighting the waiting room hangs directly above you, and despite the pain of impact in your shoulder blades and the shimmer of the crystals in the chandelier, the only thing you can focus on is the single, blaring white light in the middle shining back at you apathetically.

You squeeze your eyes shut.

You open them again.

The light is still there, but at least now you can see the rest of the ceiling, and in the corner of your eyes, the canvas paintings on the walls. You take a breath. _It isn’t good to assume things so quickly_ , you reflect, _Jumin deserves more than that._ You pick yourself up right before Jaehee could begin to panic. Your voice is shaky when you speak.

“J-Jaehee. I’m gonna go talk to Jumin now. I’ll-I’ll make it quick so you can get your papers signed.”

She blinks, and then hurries after you as you approach Jumin’s door. It’s partially open, a vertical sliver of his office exhibiting the black floors and a glimpse of the full-length windows. You’re finally close to him after what feels like centuries…it’s like holding a cherry to your lips after a time of desperate malnourishment. You lift your hand to knock on the door –

“Assistant Kang,”

In four syllables and a single voice, your heart shatters into a million tiny shards of crystal. You hadn’t heard it in so long. You’d missed it like a prisoner misses the sky. Your hand rests flat on the door beside the handle, unable to physically make a sound.

“Assistant Kang, close the door. And cancel all of my meetings for the rest of the day. I’m not in the mind to work.”

You close your hand, your knuckles skimming against the cool hardwood door. You open your mouth to speak his name, but it comes out as a rasp. You’re voiceless. Your eyes are wet. You squeeze them shut.

You push the door closed.

“M…C…” Jaehee puts a hand on your shoulder and slowly walks back to the waiting room with you.

“Ja-Jae…hee…” You can barely pronounce her name anymore. You turn around to face her, hoping the tears in your eyes aren’t too obvious. If you reach up to wipe them away, she’d know for sure. You stay as still as possible. “I…I think I’d better go home now…”

“Wait, MC…I…” Jaehee moves to the coffee table, picking up her glasses and putting them back on. “Her name is Rena Jun…she is one of Mr Han’s newer assistants. I will…ask her about what she was doing and –”

“Jaehee,” you say, a gasp, “please don’t…I don’t want…to cause any trouble. There’s probably…a reason…”

“MC, you’re crying…” Jaehee takes out a packet of tissues from her blazer pocket and removes one, gently dabbing your tears with it, “It won’t be any trouble. I will talk to her…”

You take Jaehee’s hands in yours and look at her, your eyes sure. “Jaehee, please don’t. I don’t want it to end like this.”

Jaehee closes her eyes. She understands. “I’ll take care of you, MC,” she says. She pulls you into an embrace, letting your cheek rest on her collarbone again as you cry.


	12. Passionate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some sadness, some build-up, the uszh
> 
> tw: late shipping that conveniently makes you sad

_ Is it possible for the apartment to now feel both smaller and emptier at the same time? _

It seems so. You step out of your shoes and pull off your sweater. It’s still early, and the sun would definitely burn you if you’re not careful. It’s hot. You leave the shorts you are wearing by the doorway and continue towards the wall of windows, barely clothed, yet feeling heavier than before.

You reach the windows and stand before the city, pressing your forehead and fingers against the panel that separates you from it. You long to hear the gentle buzz of transit and the spirited crowds below, and for a moment hate the triple-paned windows keeping the warm sound of people from your ears. You turn, pressing your cheek against the warm glass, and for a breath of a moment, Jumin’s figure flashes before you, a memory of him attentively describing to you how the vacuum between each pane allowed for the hot and cold temperatures to remain equitable inside…

And in the same instant he appears, he disappears.

You melt into the ground, a subtle warmth now caressing the bare skin of your back.  _ The sun… _ You lie, stiff and soundless, a crumpled mess on the carpeted floors, unable to even cry.  _ I wonder…how long I would stay like this before Jumin comes home… _

“…Mrs Han?”

You quickly sit up. It’s Sunja Kim, Jumin’s maid, and her cleaning trolley. She’s a friendly sight.

“Mrs Kim, you’re here,” you say delicately. She smiles warmly at you. “I thought you were out, Mrs Han, so I thought to do the laundry before you tried to do it for me. It is my job, after all.”

Your legs feel a bit wobbly when you stand, but you quickly head to the doorway to pick your clothes up off the floor. “I’m…sorry I left a mess,” you say, upset with yourself. “Mrs Han, you clean this apartment more than I do nowadays. Everyone who works here adores you, you know? Young people don’t tend to be quite so polite and kind-hearted like you anymore. You’re a dying breed.”

Her words hover around in your head. “Dying…breed.”

She looks apologetic as you place your clothes into the hamper on the trolley. “I’m sorry if I offended you, Mrs Han. But truly, you are one of those rare kinds…”

Jumin’s shirt is in the hamper.  _ White, dark blue pinstripes… _ “Ah…Mrs Kim…is this from today?” you ask, slowly picking it up. Mrs Kim nods; “Mr Han has been sending his clothes in from the office recently. It’s not too bothersome, though, since I’m not the one picking them up – he has one of his assistants for that. She’s quite nice, actually.”

Her words feel a bit distant, like background noise as you wonder if his cologne would still be on the smooth material. You lift the shirt to your chest, trying to remember what his warmth had felt like and...

There’s a distinct scent of velvety rose and vanilla accompanying Jumin’s cologne… You realise there’s a shiny red lipstick stain on the collar.  _ Oh…no… _

“Ah, Mrs Han, you younger folk these days all caught up in each other! I remember when my husband and I were young, we were so enraptured, too. Couldn’t bear a second without each other.” Mrs Kim had noticed the lipstick as well. Her words feel so painful in your chest.  _ Couldn’t bear a second without each other… _

You raise the collar to your lips, lightly pressing against the stain. You wonder how it felt like to kiss Jumin on his collar like that. You wonder what expression he would have had on his face. What words he would have perfectly strung together to make you feel loved. Maybe you hadn’t run out of tears after all.

“Oh! Mrs Han, that reminds me. There was a package at the door with your name on it. The deliveryman sends his apologies for it being a week late. I have it here right now!” Mrs Kim takes a parcel out from her trolley and hands it to you. You put down Jumin’s shirt.

“I don’t remember ordering anything…it must be from…oh.”  _ Jumin. _ You take out a small bundle wrapped in tissue paper from the package, and when the tissue paper falls away, a black silken kimono gown remains in your hands. There are little purple flowers embroidered into the fabric.  _ Jumin… _

“How sweet! Good timing, too.” Mrs Kim grins, and you realise that you’re still in your underwear. “Oh.” You wrap the kimono around yourself and tie the ribbon around your waist. The silk feels cool and smooth on your skin. “Thank you, Mrs Kim.”

“It looks great on you! I’ll be off now.” Mrs Kim makes her way towards the door, but stops just before reaching it.

“Mrs Han, I just remembered.”

You turn and look at her.  _ Hm? _

“You have a visitor. I told him you weren’t home and he said he’d wait for you. I didn’t realise you were here, but I’ll call him up when I get to the foyer. He said he was…Seven…Oh-Seven? He seemed very serious. I don’t think it’d be best to keep him waiting, he seemed to have allergies to the plants – his eyes were all red.”

“Oh,” you say.

“Or maybe he was just wearing new contacts.”

 


	13. Is Unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> haha fuck! (spoilers for seven's secret ending!)
> 
> tw: (ʘ‿ʘ✿)

“Saeyoung,” you say when you open the door. He smiles back at you, a smile you’d never seen from him before.

“Saeyoung,” he repeats, now grinning, a bit hungrily, “I guess you really are close with…me…” Mrs Kim was right. The sclerae of his eyes are a shocking irritated red. Your eyes worry into his as you feel his hand roughly grip your cheek.

“S-Saeyoung…your hands are a lot more calloused…did something happen? And your eyes, too. Are you alright? I have some –”

“ _STOP ACTING LIKE YOU’RE SOME KIND OF SAINT, YOU PEST._ ”

Both his hands are on your face now, gripping your cheeks so tightly that it hurts. His voice is different – it’s higher, more frenzied. You take a step back, and he follows you, eventually turning and shoving you into the wall, hard.

“ _You’re so silly…_ ”

“Sae –”

“ _I’ve seen you…trying to save everyone…_ ”

“I –”

“ _They’re not worth your time._ He’s _not worth your time…_ ”

“I don’t under–”

“ _Why does he get everything when I have nothing?_ ”

You stop struggling. You look at him and your hands find his cheeks, a soft gasp between your lips. “Saeran…”

“ _Don’t call me that!_ ”

You wince, but keep your eyes locked on his as you softly swipe your thumb across his cheek, just below his eye. There are tears forming there. His hands are still leaving red marks on your cheeks, but the crazed look on his face…he feels so delicate.

“Saeran, you…don’t have nothing…Saeyoung has always cared for you from afar… And I…I want to save you, too. I…feel some of that loneliness, too…”

“ _Liar!_ ” You’re not entirely sure whether the tears falling down his face are due to the redness in his eyes or the words in his mouth anymore. “ _He abandoned me to live his own life! Without burden! I’ll kill you and I’ll kill him too!_ ”

You stop. It all seems like a dream for a moment.

How on earth did this happen? For a long time your biggest problem was Jumin’s absence. Missing Jumin’s warmth, Jumin’s touch, Jumin’s eyes, Jumin’s scent… And now you’re being attacked by Saeyoung’s brainwashed twin brother, who feels so much more innocent than anyone else you’ve met so far, despite his current violent threats to kill you. He reminds you of someone. You’re not sure who.

“You don’t deserve this,” you utter, suddenly calm.

“ _What?_ ”

“You don’t deserve to have to feel like this. You don’t have to feel so angry. You don’t have to be fueled only by some perilous goal that will just end up hurting you more. You deserve to be happy, Saeran. You deserve to be loved, after everything the world has done to you. You deserve to be at ease.” The words feel right in your mouth. You say them as if they had come to you by nature.

“ _You say that but you’re still trembling like a rabbit in a cage. Just admit that you’re afraid of dying._ ”

You wipe away his tears with your fingers, your eyes not leaving his. You’re determined.

“I’m afraid of what you will become if you kill me.”

He lets out a single, choked chuckle. The bright yellow contact lens in his right eye slips downwards. He doesn’t blink. His right eye is now a soft mint green.

“ _Ha! ...Fuck!_ ” His eyes are wide, his grin falters slightly. Tears are consistently falling now.

Gently, slowly, you move your index to his eye, placing the tip of your finger on the lens and removing it. You place it in the pocket of your kimono before returning your fingers to his cheek. He didn’t flinch at all during the process. He didn’t say a word, either.

“Saeran…” you lift your left index to remove his other lens, but he catches your wrist before you do. His grip is tight and rough. He bares his teeth at you, as if wanting to bite.

“ _You’re…hah…so cute…_ ” A crooked smile accompanies his words now. “ _I want to kill you so badly…but it’d be…such a waste...wouldn’t it?_ ”

“Saeran…”

“ _I wanted to kill you today…I put in so much effort…so that I could kill you and stop him from leaving…so I could still beat him…but I…_ ” His right hand remains clasped around your wrist, but his left slips away from your cheek and into one of his pockets to withdraw something too small to see.

“ _I want to give you a prize for amusing me,_ ” he says, almost singing the words. He chuckles to himself, his eyes alight with sudden excitement. “ _But you’re not allowed to remember it…so let this be a dream…_ ”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

You’re terrified now. You can’t let him touch you, but you’re too afraid to move.

Saeran opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue, his expression now delirious. His face is barely a touch away. He puts his finger to his mouth, leaving a small white tablet in the middle of his pink tongue. He smiles at you.

“ _Your husband goes on a lot of business trips, doesn’t he?_ Now let’s take you on a proper Businessman’s Trip.”

His lips crash into yours, and in an instant, his mouth opens over you, his tongue forcing its way between your teeth. You want to fight him, but his hand tightly squeezes your jaw, forcing it open for his tongue to do as it pleases.

You taste the tablet and it tastes like dirt. You sputter, your hands fighting, trying to pull Saeran’s shoulders from you. His shoulders are stronger than you'd expected. His right hand leaves your wrist and closes around your neck, lightly squeezing your windpipe and making you gasp for air, taking more of the taste of him into your mouth. He whispers into it, rushed words in a hasty declaration:

“ _I’m going to show you what a good time is.”_


	14. Lonely Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ???
> 
> tw: hallucination wreck p1, Divorce

The colours melt and surround the image of him, and there’s nothing so beautiful as the image of him in front of you, lying with you on the bed that had felt empty for all those days of eternity when he was not home.

“ _Jumin…_ ” You reach to touch him, and for once it feels whole. Shadows play in the background and hushed whispers dance around your ears. _To touch him…_ His chest is warm on your hand, and the feeling of it breaks your heart and soothes it all at the same time. _To feel…him…_

He smiles quietly at you, an empty expression, unmoving. Deep reds and oranges in the form of abstract waves and shapes twist in the background and in your heart, pale yellows and greens drifting between the visual thoughts. A pale purple outlines his body, his hair a neat mess and his eyes looking into you but not seeming to see.

“ _Jumin, I miss you. I miss you so much it carves away a part of me each time I sense but don’t feel you._ ”

He closes his eyes, and pale roses swim in his eyelids; the warmth of his chest seems to dissipate from beneath your fingers. He grows colder.

“ _I don’t know…if they call this love anymore…when even the heartbreak of not seeing you makes me so glad, because at least then, I can feel something with the thought of you in my heart. Because at least then you can still hurt me… I miss how you hurt me… I miss how seeing you and loving you so much made me so happy it hurt me…_ ”

The tears in your eyes are warm, and finally he lifts his hand to your cheek. His hair flutters suddenly, as if he were underwater, eyes still closed and peaceful. He brings his thumb to the space below your eye and touches away your woes. Your eyes close, too, at the gentle touch you missed so much, and the warmth fades.

His chest is cold and hard, you close your hand onto it, clawing at the lack of flesh. Your knuckles skim against the hardwood door. You want to open it. You want to see him see you while he still exists.

His voice appears.

“ _Close the door…I’m not in the mind for you…_ ”

You squeeze your eyes shut tighter, the teardrops staining the whole of your face.

“ _Please don’t stop hurting me, Jumin!”_ You clench your fist over his cold chest until you can feel your nails biting blood from your palm. “ _Please don’t stop hurting me until you come back, please don’t leave me without carving your love into my chest so that I won’t ever be able to forget you, even if I tried, even if it ends up killing me…kill…me…_ ”

You open your eyes, and he’s already gone. The colours had already faded. You roll onto your back, and the ceiling is a blank white. You squeeze the phone in your hand, teardrops falling into it. “ _Jumin…_ ” you say one last time amidst drowning tears.

“Jumin, please save me. This touch feels so harsh _…_ ”

You end the voicemail message, and your body feels weak. You don’t remember calling him, and you don’t remember climbing into bed. You don’t even remember getting home. You can’t recall anything after getting into the elevator to leave C&R. Your mind is buzzing, and when you try to sit up, your arms become like butter and you fall again.

“Ju…” Your mouth tastes bitter, and as you sputter at the taste, you see a glass of water by your bedside table. It has a pink straw in it. With trembling fingers, you manage to pick up the glass and sip the water inside. It tastes strangely sweet. You’re thankful for it.

_Bzz!_

The glass falls from your weak fingers at the sound of your phone ringing. It falls to the floor beside you. The glass breaks. It shatters.

You jump from your bed and kneel beside the fractals. _At least you’d emptied the glass._ You reach to touch the pieces.

_Bzz!_

The sound startles you, and your fingers shake as they fumble to clutch the phone.

_Bzz!_

It’s Jaehee.

_Bzz!_

She’s so soft.

_Bzz!_

She’s so good to you.

_Bzz!_

You don’t pick up. You tap the ‘decline’ button.

_…!_

_…!_

_…!_

_Bzz!_

It’s

It’s him.

It’s him!

You pick up the phone and press it to your ear, your breath held like it would be a crime to live.

“Miss MC Cha?”

Your full name. It’s not his voice.

“Can you please stop calling Jumin? It's pathetic, you know?”

Is this – her?

“I really hate people like you. Who won’t let go of someone even after they’ve really messed up.”

Messed up? _The kiss?_

"You can take what you want, just...please just let him go. Spare his heart. He’s sick of you. You’re despicable.”

Sick… Despicable...

There's a slight pause, and for a moment you can hear, faintly, the deep sound of Jumin's voice. What was he saying?  _'Rena...'?_

“Look, the game's over. He knows everything. Expect divorce papers in the mail. Leave him alone. I’m going to take care of him now.”

_Click!_

_…_

_…_

_…_

Divorce… papers? Care for him…?

…

_Ding-dong!_


	15. [??? & MC (Part 1)]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ????
> 
> [this chapter takes place directly after chapter 13: is unknown]
> 
> tw: drug use, some noncon touching, ooc saeran

**Saeran**

_She’s so silly._

Maybe with the hallucinogen in her blood, she’d see further than the four walls of her fabricated utopia of false hopes and useless dreams. Saeran hates people like her. People who use pointless optimism and empty smiles to pretend that every problem in their lives can’t affect them. She should see the real world. The world where pain and suffering rules the lives of the people stirring in that city below their feet. Then, perhaps, she could join him in true paradise.

She falls limp in his arms. They’d shared the pill, but it looks like she’d taken the bulk of its effects. Still, Saeran could see some neon pinks and blues spreading across her skin, like city lights reflected in her softness. There are patterns snaking across her body now, like otherworldly tattoos of graceful strokes and colours decorating her serene, resting figure. They spread like flowers on the exposed skin of her neck, her chest, her arms, and her stomach, all slipping from beneath her silken kimono, now falling loose. There are flowers in her hair, too. Dog-roses and pale purple milkvetches resting in her hair like a delicate crown of lying innocence. Her hair flutters as if she is flying – or falling – in his gentle embrace. She’s peaceful.

It makes him chuckle with slight conceit. _Her husband can and will never be able to, in all of his days, ever even_ think _of her as beautiful as she appears to him now._ He kisses her chest, and she smells as soft and sweet as she looks. He runs his fingers through her hair, the strands like silk under his fingertips. He pulls her into him to carry her to the windows before delicately placing her on the floor with careful fingers. He wants to present her to the whole city, so that the greedy people below could see the naiveté and beauty they could never have, that they had ruined with their selfish social rules and constructs. He touches her; her cheek is soft, her eyes are open, but vacant, like art still searching for meaning, and suddenly for the first time in his miserable and meaningless life, Saeran feels afraid that he might break something.

“You’re so silly, you know that?”

He leans down to kiss her softly on the lips, whispering into them.

“Don’t you know that some people don’t want to be saved?”

He sighs at the vulnerable sight of her and starts to untie her kimono, opening it to reveal her fragile skin. She’s more beautiful without anything touching her, he notes. But he can’t help tainting her himself. It’s not an erotic kind of touch. It’s just…searching, curious? As he glides his fingertips across her abdomen, her eyes seem to begin to find a blurred focus on him. She smiles idly. It’s a small, silly, absent-minded smile. Her right hand reaches upwards, and he holds it, suddenly curious as to why her touch feels so good on his skin.

Having watched her through CCTV cameras for so long, Saeran can identify all of her different smiles. There’s her forced one, when she’s extremely uncomfortable, which has its fascinating merits of its own…but it’s rare for her not to be grinning in that foolishly cheerful manner of hers all of the time despite whatever situation she would find herself in. Then there’s the smile she has for that husband of hers. The executive chairman. Saeran doesn’t really like him, but it always looked like _she_ did, judging by how her entire body seemed to light up in his presence. With a tugging at his heartstrings – which is a new sensation he realises he’d never before felt – Saeran puzzles over why his mind is thinking that it would be nicer if she smiled like that to _him_ , instead.

 _“No,”_ he voices, shaking his head as he lifts her hand to his cheek, _“I like this smile here more. This one, I’ve never seen before. You look…”_

He removes his hand from her abdomen to take her other hand in his, too, a roused smile now playing upon his lips.

_“…lonely.”_

She continues to smile dreamily, her head now cocked to the side, still on the floor. Her hair is surely flowing now, soft gusts of imaginary wind contorting her locks into peaceful waves that shine in the colours of the city glowing beside her.

 _“Jumin…”_ she mumbles, and Saeran scowls, removing her hand from his cheek.

 _“…so silly.”_ he says, shaking his head and gripping her hands tighter. _How could she even think of him right now?_ That smile can’t be for _him_ . He doesn’t deserve her lonely smile, when _he_ is the very cause of it. He lets go of her hands and pinches her cheeks, narrowing his eyes. _Stupid._

_“You… I’m going to make it so that you will never say his name ever again. Okay?”_

A moan drifts from her lips in reply, and his curious interest in her suddenly piques. _“How stra –”_

_“Saeran…”_

_…_

_…?!_

If her moaning of his name hadn’t surprised him just then, her immediate movement afterwards; consisting of her throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face into his nape, definitely manages to. He’s taken aback by her sudden warm embrace, yet his hands find themselves unconsciously drifting to her back, keeping her against him.

_“…say my name again.”_


	16. Jazzes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> is this what they call overly descriptive angst?
> 
> tw: unhealthy alcohol consumption (thanks, zen); return of semi-sadistic!Seven i love him

“MC, say something.”

You don’t answer him as you place the glass on the kitchen countertop and unscrew the lid of the bottle. _He’d_ brought the bottle home after closing a particularly profitable deal with the liquor company two months ago. Vanilla vodka. He’d chuckled when you’d tried to pronounce the strange Swedish brand’s name. Chuckled and then abandoned the bottle to touch your lips and kiss them.

And now, as afternoon is approaching, you stand in this apartment with your headstrong, ever-caring, ever-loving best friend, in the kimono _he’d_ bought you a week ago, a week ago when he had still loved you. And for the first time in your life, you want to drink a good memory away.

You fill the glass to the brim and put it to your lips. Concern and distress transudes through his words as he reaches for you.

“MC, don’t; this isn’t _you_!” Zen catches your hand, only managing to take the glass from you after you’d already downed a large gulp of the burning liquid. He drops the glass onto the countertop, it’s still three quarters full, and grabs hold of your wrists, pulling you towards him. He holds them tightly, firmly. His touch says he’s not giving up on you. You wish you aren’t so thankful.

“Tell me what happened!” he presses, “What did he do?”

His eyes are shining like wildfire now. Zen’s face was always flawless, absent of any blemish or fault that would even slightly render it anything less than immaculate. But now the red in his eyes are extraordinarily intensified, his expression a disortment of pain and dread. Pain and dread for _you_.

It’s horrible. It’s not just his face that confounds you; it’s the sound of his worry, his messy thrown-on clothes that he’d no doubt rushed into to get to you sooner, his hair, messily tied and still wet from the shower he’d left to run to you for, his scent, present even now, deep and soothing through the smell of water, and the sensation of his hands around your wrists…his hands…his…

“I – I’m sorry…” you gasp, throat still burning. Somehow the words feel so native on your tongue. “I – I’m…I j-just need some time alone right now. I’m sorry… I don’t know why Saeyoung told you to come here… I just need…” You force yourself to tear your eyes from him, beginning to reach for the glass again, but he’s quick to seize it from the table first and put it to his lips. He downs it, eyes fixed on you all the while as his Adam’s apple pulses with each mouthful, a rivulet of the spirit trickling down his lower lip, leaving it wet and glistening in the light of the setting sun through the window.

He slams the glass down for the second time this evening, panting, his eyes still fixed on you.

_“What happened?"_

His gaze turns soft, and he holds his hand to his heart. “Please just…” he closes it over his chest, which is still heaving from the heat of the drink, his eyes imploring you, solemnly sincere, “just tell me. I’m here for you. Here.”

His words are persistent, but they’re so full of the warmth he had always given you. Always given you when you’re near. You want to wipe away the remains of the liquor from his lips, but then he rubs it away with the back of his wrist before you could start to ponder. He waits for your answer.

What’s your answer?

“I’m…”

You try to think of what had _happened_. But the more you think of it, the more you feel like your thoughts are being sucked up into a rippling wormhole, the more you begin to wonder if anything that’s happened to you these past four days had really even happened at all. And with that, what if this past week, this past month, heck, the moment you’d opened that app you thought was for chatting to pretty boys…it all feels so dream-like and impossible now. It almost feels like you were never there for any of it, just a voyeur in somebody else’s dream…like nothing was tangible…like nothing you saw or felt…could be…touched…?

“I’m…”

Your hand is shaky, and an inability to withstand your desperate craving for some form of manumission from the pains of loneliness and absence of touch leads you to lift your hand towards his figure. He looks at you curiously for a moment, comprehending, then lifts his hand towards you, too. Your hands draw closer, slowly, like the beginning of a shy dance between trembling fingers...closer…

Your breath hitches with a gasp as your fingertips hover before each other in mid- air, vulnerable and hesitant to touch. You stare at his pale, slim fingers, and then…and then he touches you. And then the contact – the contact explodes on your skin like his warmth is the potent catalyst, causing your every nerve ending to jump, cry, to come alive, the sensation rapidly racing across your skin like a burst of clean water upon dirty glass jars.

Your fingers grasp at his warmth desperately, clumsily, like you’re afraid of becoming lost.

“I’m...!” You stop and force yourself to tear your gaze from his fingers and lift your eyes to his. You stare at him, confounded for a moment, then break into a smile; a pitiful, wholly ironic smile.

“I’m...I think…I think I’m going to be alone again, Zen.”

Zen’s eyebrows knit together, the look in his eyes suddenly changing, into something bolder, something suddenly resolute. He squeezes your hand in his and opens his mouth to –

“HOLY FUCK, MC, YOUR CCTV CAMERAS ARE TRIPPING THE _FUCK_ OUT!”

Seven had kicked the door open, which wasn’t closed, and is now in the process of registering the scene before him again. Everyone is frozen for a bit. You look at Seven with slight concern.

“Oh,” he says, straightening and switching to his inside voice. He grins.

“Hey Zen, if you hold her left hand, can I bite her right?”


	17. [Zen & Seven & MC]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A promise to be kept.

**Zen and Seven** were never really close until MC came around. Zen had been immediately drawn to her the moment she’d entered the chat room, but was drawn further still whenever she said something cute, something kind. And Seven, he loved and hated how, despite so obviously choosing Jumin over him, she had decided to speak such kind and cheering words every moment he was in the chatroom. Perhaps it was this mutual frustration that brought them together, somewhat to Jumin’s detriment.

It was Zen who realised in the first place what a good team they made together in teasing Jumin’s emotions. They’d both been surprised by his ability to feel anything, let alone _love_. That was one of the reasons why they were always so cautious of Jumin’s affections for her – they’d seemed so impossible. Yet somehow everything impossible didn’t seem so absurd whenever MC was around. She had a way with her. She was…what was the word? _Ah – godsend._

Hearing of her being held prisoner in Jumin’s apartment had brought both of them quite the shock of realisation – Zen, for discovering how much he wished MC was at _his_ place instead (and the strange thoughts of what he wanted to do with her there) and Seven, for discerning exactly how much he had hated that she’d chosen _Jumin_ over him (and how much he was willing to give to have been chosen by her instead). Of course, neither of their terrible predicaments could be shared with her, and they were forced to hide behind their facets in order to avoid spilling something harmful that might cause her strife. Her choice must always be respected, after all.

It was on the day of Jumin and MC’s wedding that Zen and Seven made the pact together. (Yoosung was meant to be a part of it, too, but he’d looked rather downtrodden the entire night, staring longingly at MC as he drank himself to the brink of unconsciousness. Strange to say he ended up going home with a girl who, after that night, became his very first girlfriend. They broke up quite early on and rather easily for Yoosung, though. What a shame; that girl had loved him to bits.) The particular promise was made as a somewhat sideways comment from Zen over his glass of champagne that night – _“If he ever hurts her, we’re going to take care of her, Seven. Whatever it takes.”_

Seven had nodded in agreement and downed his drink, feigning distractedness to hide how thankful he suddenly was now that he had found a kind reason to keep loving her, or at least to keep her loved and safe. And whatever Zen was thinking, he was too busy pouting over Jumin’s every interaction with MC; the way he touched her hand (not soft enough, not appreciating enough!), the way he held her waist (too possessive, too careless towards her!); to really mull it over properly. Maybe that’s why it took Zen much longer than Seven to realise the true reason why he found her so incredibly precious to him. Precious beyond compare.

Well, _whatever_. Jumin was chosen by MC. So even in their mutual dismay, Zen and Seven will always care for and cherish her, all while keeping a respectful distance. Well…unless she needed the closeness they so wanted to grant her…

 

**MC**

Your feelings were always a mess.

Always, always, stuck between loving too much and wanting too much. In the beginning, you’d so easily loved them all. Wasn’t it obvious that each and every one of them were so easy to love? Yoosung, sweet innocence; Zen, warmest care; Jaehee, thoughtful tenderness; Saeyoung, ardent vigour; and Jumin…fragile Jumin, harshly soft Jumin, intensely passionate Jumin, gracefully perfect Jumin…

You’d loved everyone and wanted so much to make everyone happy, but a choice had to be made, and so you chose Jumin. So what made him different? Was he really.

_Different?_

These thoughts in your head haunt the back of your mind as you keep promising yourself that the only undying love in your heart was for your love, your husband, your only. There’s a pedestal in your soul reserved for his love, and no one could ever take his place, for he has been imprinted in your soul forever. _Forever_. And when you close her eyes and listen to his song, doesn’t it feel so safe to be loved by someone so passionate?

Or…isn’t it better to be loved by someone who can hold you for a moment longer?


	18. Bebop Jazz Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you want.
> 
> tw: alcohol; drunken affections and loving mistakes; (hallucination wreck still not over)

“Luciel,” Zen says, firmly but not unkindly. He kisses your hand, then pulls you towards him to kiss your forehead, too. Then he picks up the bottle and leads you to the dining table, Seven following with a serious expression now underscoring his tender features.

You languidly rub your eyes. The alcohol, and something else - what was it? - is leaving a pleasant flowing sensation in your brain, but at the same time, the certain tone of the situation makes you feel a little tense. You want them to leave. It’s important that they leave. It tugs at your throat and your chest; it’s important that they leave because if they don’t, you won’t be able to think of Jumin anymore.

Wait, why do you need to think of Jumin, again? You shake your head in the fuzziness. _Svedka._

You don't remember sitting down until Seven settles next to you, Zen at your other side. He picks up the bottle - who? - and takes a draught, grimacing at the aftertaste. “MC,” he says, a deep red already forming upon his cheeks - whose cheeks? - “did someone…some…come to hurt you?” Saeyoung hiccups and takes another gulp of the bottle. Saeyoung's cheeks.

You take it from his hands - Saeyoung's hands - and steal a sip, for no sake but in and of itself.

“No,” you say to him, Saeyoung. You cough. Someone wraps an arm - it's Zen's arm - around you from behind, patting away your coughs with gentle care. You lean back into him. Back into Zen. That’s selfish. You're selfish. Isn't that alright. To want this kind of comfort from someone you don’t deserve. Do you deserve? Deserve. Dee...

Saeyoung takes the bottle from you the moment before it slips from your fingertips. He sighs, angelic in your ears, as his other hand reaches towards the corner of your mouth to touch away the remaining acidic wetness, not drawing his hand back when he is done. His touch is cool. You want more.  _Less. Touch me less. Take your caring fingers away._ You try to close your eyes, but he takes your chin between his fingers and lifts it, and you open your eyes so that he could look into them, into you, so curiously. “Your CCTV cameras…” His voice is slurred and laced with the poison. _D_ _runk.._ _._  “…I track them for security breaches, and…there was one a half hour ago. The footage…the apartment was empty all day, until you appeared in bed out of nowhere…someone must’ve hacked into the cameras…I don’t know why…”

His eyes wander to your lips. To your lips. This time, he doesn't look away.  _So drunk means..._

You look at his eyes. They’re bright, and it makes you turn your face away from him, letting his fingers fall, back into his own lap. He's still looking at you, a mixture of care and concern. “MC, what happened…?" he asks, "Where was Jumin?”

_Ow._

You tilt your head upwards. _The light is..._ You extend your arm and reach with your fingertips to touch the light…it’s still bright outside, a warmth and radiance coming from the now setting sun. The sun… Oh, who was it, again? Someone used to use the sun as a metaphor for their love all of the time…someone sad, someone you wanted to care for…someone who told you that you had your very own sun. That you had… _Jumin_.

_"Where was Jumin?"_

You drop your hand, your knuckles slapping your thigh with an unexpected harshness of sound. Didn’t you used to like harshness? You used to love how Jumin could be so harsh and so passionate all the same… Wait. _Used to?_

You look up, and the lights aren’t on, but the corner of your eye can still see the rays of sun from the window to your far right. Your brain is fuzzy again. Fuzzy fuzzy. You can tell because it’s the first time you’ve ever thought of Jumin in past tense. He's never been past tense. He's never been away from your heart. Away.

_The ceiling’s so bare away…_

What would he - what would Jumin - Jumin - say if he could see you right now, being touched, being held? You know exactly what he would say, don't you? What he - his name, Jumin - what he would say to you, what face he would make. You've never seen him really disgusted before, except for that one time, when he and you were walking down the streets one night after a movie - that's rare, you never really spent time privately outside - and your arm was linked in his, and out of seemingly nowhere, a woman had jumped out and shouted her affections for him - for Jumin Han - and how she was so upset he'd married someone else when he was supposed to promise his love for her instead. And he'd looked at her like - like - like she was so unnecessary as a human being. They'd said later that she was deluded, that her obsession had sprung from an innate psychosis. You'd become upset that he'd made an ordeal out of getting her taken away, when she hadn't really done anything too bad...  _That poor woman..._  That night wasn't supposed to be something so memorable. You figure he - _Jumin_ \- must've forgotten the incident by now, busy with better thoughts. But right now it's popped into your head because you still remember his  _face_  so well _._ So  _disgusted._

And now you know exactly what he would say to you if he were here right now, and exactly that face he would make - _"You're disgusting,"_  he'd tell you, _You're just using the alcohol and the drugs as some sort of vindication for your sickening behaviour, aren't you? As some desperate reason for you to be a shameless fucking slut."_

_"You disgust me. You're pathetic."_

Disgusting and pathetic. Oh, but what does it matter! What does it matter that he thinks that of you.  _Right?_ What does it matter that he thinks you're disgusting... What does it matter that he doesn't love you anymore... What does it... what the hell does it matter. He, he, _he_ was the one - Jumin Han - he was the one who took you away and told you not to love anyone else. Did he ever even think for a moment about how you'd felt for anyone but him? You had loved all of them. You'd loved all of them from the very start. You wanted to love each and every one of them over and over again, but he took you  _away._ And you let him because - because why. Because you - oh, who cares why? If he - if Jumin Han - if Jumin Han hadn't loved you and promised to love you forever like he doesn't anymore, you would be able to make everyone happy.

But he did and you can't. Can you? You...

You close your hand over your chest. _It's hurting._ It hurts so much you want to yell. But this pain, it feels…it feels…it feels good… It had always been closed around Jumin, and you’d always refused to open it for anyone else after he'd taken it, scared that it might hurt your love for him. But now...with that silky voice...  _“It’s pathetic.” “He’s sick of you.”_ Ah…

_So he really won't love you anymore._

Arms - they're Zen's arms - they remain around you, and you can spot a tuft of Saeyoung’s hair from your peripheral vision even as your gaze remains on the bare, barren ceiling. They're both so close to you, you can feel the heat of their breath against all of you. They're so close.

_Can you open your heart, then?_

“I…” you struggle; your voice is sparse, “I…”

They’re hanging onto every word you say. You feel it. You feel Zen’s warm, loving hands tighten around your waist and Saeyoung’s momentary hesitation as his soft, cool hand reaches for your lips one last time, pressing against it with gentle love.

“I…” you say, “I want…”

Your hand finds Saeyoung’s cheek, your thumb pressing onto his soft lips, and your head leans further back so you can look at Zen’s pale chin, which you kiss, softly, anticipatorily. He gives a word of a soft moan, only audible through the vibration through his skin upon your lips.

You close your eyes and your hand slides from Saeyoung’s mouth to his collarbone, your fingers hooking the collar of his shirt, tugging down on the material so that your knuckles can graze his heated skin. His hands are quick to slip between the folds of your slip, and Zen’s hands find your cheeks, lifting your lips to his.

A soft kiss. A timid caress.

“I want…” your breath catches, “…touch.”

Wanting kiss. Desirous caress.

Pulls you to the bedroom.


	19. [??? & MC (Part 2)]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> !!!
> 
> tw: emotionally aggressive saeran; shaming; 'um why is she crying?'

_“Saeran…”_ you say, swiftly climbing into his lap. He doesn’t fight it despite appearing startled at the contact. He’s soft and cool against you. Even with the strange colours surrounding your vision, you feel sane. Awake. Saeran’s skin is a pale porcelain, his image in your eyes appearing like a moving mosaic. You touch his bright red hair and it’s stringy between your fingers, but still looks like its image is made up of those broken mosaic tiles you used to see on those old church walls back in your hometown.

_“Say it again. Say it again and I’ll be forced to take you away with me to paradise.”_

You open your mouth, and he clasps his hand over it, barring his name from your lips. His expression is suddenly severe as he leans in to you, pressing his lips against the back of his hand so that your eyes are level.

_“Don’t you dare.”_

You stare into him. His left eye is a bright artificial golden yellow, and his right is an entrancing soft mint green. For a moment, you’re distracted by the feeling that you’re looking at both of the Choi twins at once, but then you dig your fingers into the nape of his neck, and the red scruffy wig slides off of his scalp. You tousle the white mess of hair underneath, your gaze now immersed in the strands of white and pink. His eyes fall shut as you massage his hair beneath your fingertips. His hair is soft, like a…bunny? He’s so docile in this position. For a moment, he leans into your touch.

And the next, his eyes snap open and he’s shoving your face away from him, his own face now contorted with a growing disgust. The mismatched colours of his eyes suddenly become less and less beautiful and more crazed and menacing as he bares his gritted teeth at you, his expression fierce.

_“Don’t touch me!”_

You stumble onto your knees, hands between them as you peek timidly up at him, your heart now racing with confusion. His eyes look like stained glass windows. Your kimono falls off of your shoulders. _Is there something wrong with me…?_

_“Sae –”_

_“Don’t say that name! You’re fucking disgusting! You’re so fucking repulsive, you disgusting, adulterine slut. No wonder that executive chairman avoids you. You’re too fucking busy trying to fuck everyone else and use everyone around you. Look at you. Exposed and shameless. All women like you are repulsive pieces of shit. Don’t come near – eh…what? Why are you crying?”_

You sniffle as you choke back your tears, trying to wipe them away with the backs of your hands. “I – I’m…sorry…” You hiccup between your words, the tears falling to your mouth and onto the floor, onto your skin. “I – I’m pathetic…I’m so – so repulsive…J-Jumin shouldn’t love someone like m-me…I’m so c-confused about h-how I f-feel and it’s…I’m never making the r-right decisions anymore…I’m becoming everything I’ve-I’ve hated…and I’m just hurting the people that are my f-friends…”

_“What are you –”_

“I’m so-sorry…to you. I sh-should go.”

You stand up and pass out, neatly slumping into his arms.

 

 _“This…woman…”_ Saeran stands up and gathers her up into his arms. _What a nuisance._ The truth is that he hadn’t expected her to react like that at all. It isn’t like he could have helped what he had said, anyway. The happy drugs were wearing off, and touch stops being so nice once sanity weaves itself back into his mind. He can’t remember what he had mixed into that pill, but he could guess now that it was at least semi-successful. Except now he has this skank under his care.

He wonders if he should just drop her on the floor and be done with it. He sighs. If she dies here, though, that might end up causing even more problems for him in the end…who knows what that corporate idiot might do? He might definitely be avoiding her, but from Saeran’s hacking escapades in the Messenger app, he could see that the guy still looks at her photos on the app every few hours. Strange mixed signals.

Saeran frowns a bit after dropping her onto her bed. It’s quite the miracle that she hadn’t already accidentally killed herself at this point in her life given that weak, trusting and dependent attitude of hers. And with her husband going MIA for so long, it’s probably only a matter of time before she starts depending on someone else, that someone probably being the  _hacker_ of all people. Or that little blond one. Or the actor, even that assistant lady. She does seem to have a lot of people at her disposal…no wonder she’s a slut.

He scoffs and begins to head out of the room without pulling the blanket over her when a soft moan comes from her direction, followed by a rolling sound and a loud thud. He turns around, annoyed now as he shoves her back into the bed, quickly pulling her kimono back around her, tying the ribbon, and throwing the blanket over her face.

Momentarily satisfied, Saeran stands beside the bed, pointedly wrinkling his nose at the place on the blanket where her head should be, then groans to himself before pulling the blanket down to her shoulders so that she could breathe. He turns her face to the side, carelessly flicking away a lock of hair.

_“How useless.”_

He straightens and stares at her again for a full minute before giving up at her pitiful sight. The thing will need water when it wakes up. Letting it dehydrate to death would be a problem…

He sighs, then chuckles in spite of himself. What was he doing?  _This woman…_

What on earth did they all see in her.


	20. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You've already fallen; this is but the gentle rush.
> 
> tw: (ʘ‿ʘ✿)(ʘ‿ʘ✿)(ʘ‿ʘ✿) M/M/F

“Are you sure?”

You’re kneeling on the bed with the two of them. Zen’s words are delicate to your ears. He speaks them as he puts your fingers to his lips, sucking softly on the fingertips.

_“Are you sure?”_

Saeyoung is behind you. His voice is quiet. He says these three words to you as he presses his hard chest against your back, his mouth dragging across on your skin, leaving wet and red marks up and down your shoulder.

How do you answer that? Is there even an answer? How could you admit something you feel when it's something so terribly wrong?

And you close your eyes; you turn back. And then your lips, they meet Saeyoung’s with a silent passionate release, and your fingers, they dig deeper into Zen’s mouth, your other hand feeling for his touch, clutching his hand tightly, like a child, when your fingertips ultimately meet and intertwine. _This feels good,_  you think, _They_ _make you feel good, so you should to make them feel good, right?_

It’s not long before Saeyoung’s hands travel to your skin, your abdomen, reaching beneath your silken kimono, gently skimming across the bare skin of your stomach and shying just below the under-wire of your bra, idly playing with the material. And Zen - Zen takes this liberty of your now exposed neck to graze his soft, tender lips down towards your collarbone, causing your body to shiver from how aware you are of these barely-there butterfly kisses upon your sensitive skin.

And Saeyoung - Saeyoung’s hands, slender and skilled, quickly pull loose the knot of your wrap, opening it and easing the cool material off from your shoulders, off from your arms, off from your body and warm skin. Until the wrap becomes nothing more than a pile of something you can only try to forget. _Please don't forget._ Zen’s hands are sliding up and down your sides, leaving goosebumps in his touch’s wake, an aching awakening steadily stirring within your nerve endings.

“MC…”

Zen’s voice is enough to make your heart fall. He’s so gentle that it hurts you. He runs his fingers through your hair and he peppers kisses all around your cheeks, his other hand still grasping yours with a comfort as foreign as space and Côte d'Ivoire.

_“Can I touch you more?”_

The quiet murmur in your ear from the man behind you makes your skin go hot. _Of course he can, of course he can._ Your thoughts are so nonsensical now. But what sense can you conjure when his kisses meet your spine. You can’t help your laboured breathing, your gasps for air when they take it away – and Zen’s tongue on your neck, and Saeyoung’s chest flush against your back.

“I’ll do only what you want me to.” Zen says, reaching for your lips.

 _“I promise I’ll make you feel everything with me.”_ Saeyoung purrs, his fingers finally crawling underneath the wiring of your bra and brazenly grasping the tender softness of your breasts, feeling them with a repressed eagerness that he can only alleviate by softly biting the back of your neck, then digging his teeth into your back, then working his mouth at the clasp of your bra, somehow unravelling it as he unravels you, softly and carefully guiding the straps down your arms with subtly trembling fingers, as if he couldn’t entirely accept nor register this moment, either.

You open your eyes and your hands decide to move of their own accord, the hand once grasping Zen’s now tugging at his shirt and the other behind you, gripping the unmistakable hardness of Saeyoung’s erection through the material of his pants. You want them to be bare, too.

You can hear Saeyoung working on removing his shirt and pants from behind you, and from in front of you, Zen pulls off his shirt, showing you the tones of his chest once more. Before moving further, he takes a moment to smile at you, with a smile that he knows always comforts you, and pulls the hair-tie from his ponytail to tie it again properly. His affectionate red eyes stay with you while his hands work around his lustrous ponytail, and for a moment, you’re transfixed by his movements. He looks so calm and gentle, as if he hasn’t yet realised what he’d wanted to do with you all along. You allow yourself to indulge in this single fleeting moment, feeling dewy-eyed and innocent for one final second more, before all of these hands come back to touch you all over again.

Zen rubs into you through the cotton of your underwear, his fingers circling your sex with apprehensive delicacy. Saeyoung takes no trouble in slipping his hand under the fabric, readying you for him. There’s a rush of cold anticipation through your body at the thought of him inside you. You can feel his size in your hold; how big he is, how much he’d fill you completely. The thought of pain doesn’t even reach you; the idea of the pleasure, the unfathomable simulation, is enough pain in and of itself. And Zen, soft, alabaster Zen; your eyes guiltily travel down to his navel, the enticingly exquisite snowy white hair of his trail leading to his firm erection – _for you?_ You can’t imagine how they’d both feel buried deep inside of you.

And they _touch_ you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i have been going back to delete all obnoxious chapter notes but here is this beautiful thing i didn't want to unshare from miss saffron:  
>  http://la-saffron.tumblr.com/image/156849621055 ;;
> 
> and also, thank you for reading! <3


	21. [Zen & Saeyoung & MC & The Fall]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Advice: FUCK
> 
> [note: switches between second and third person a lot for uh dramatic effect. haha i'll explain soon enough n-n!]

**Zen**

He ruefully slides his hand from your grasp, leaning back in his kneel to reach behind his ear, pulling away the wet hairband from his messy ponytail, slipping it around his fluid wrist so that his fingers could work to smooth out the kinks in his hair before retying it into a loose bun.

He smiles at you as he does this, gentle and reassuring, and he kisses you as soon as his hands can touch you again. He grasps your shoulder as his other hand slips down your unveiled body, and when he reaches under your panties, when his hard erection enters you so suddenly and lustfully, _oh_ , you’re gone. You shiver.

\--

Being inside her – to feel her around his cock, to hold her and kiss her and not need to let go. Zen was half afraid it’d all disappear if he dared to close his eyes. Her skin appeared to glow in his light, sweat he loved running his tongue over, just falling down her naked skin that he could see, could touch, could _have_. Even in this moment; it was just this moment; he needed only this moment.

Their hands were so messily clasped, her fingers desperately tangling in his whenever their palms separated. Every act of his body seemed to unfold out of pure, uncontrollable impulse – each time her hips rocked into him, a shiver tremored through his entirety, and his other hand, now closed around her thigh, involuntarily tightened, his fingertips sinking into her skin as he thrusted deeper into her, leaving soft shadowed impressions where they laid, where he laid.

It was almost immoral – absolutely dirty and deplorable how she was so able to make him lose control of his body. He wanted to love her properly, tenderly, eyes boring into hers with care and affections. But his eyes were eventually forced closed as the world around him collapsed within itself, collapsed around her; her body; her heat; her sex. Fuck, eventually he stopped worrying about leaving bruises on her skin – he’d stopped thinking altogether – how could he bear the distraction of thought when his throbbing cock was ramming into her wetness, her warmth. His nails dug – pierced – into her thigh. She gasped like she liked it, wanted more of it. His once gentle and caring thrusts readily became more rushed, more rough, and these heated movements of his translated into their accumulated gasps and moans; uncontrollable begs for more, for forever.

**Saeyoung**

He wished he could see her face. The softness of her hair against his plush lips never felt like enough. He liked the smell of her locks, the scent of her neck from the rose oil she liked to daub on her skin whenever she went out. But he wanted _more_ . It was so frustrating that he couldn’t have _more_ . Couldn’t have _all._

This endless wanting, a fire inside of him he didn’t know he had such fuel for, it was burning and it killed him that she couldn’t see how much he loved her.

 _Turn around,_ his thoughts whispered, _Turn around and see how happy I am that you’re with me_.

But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t choose him even now, it seemed. He wanted to be first in her heart, but even as he groped at her chest for her heart, it was closer to the other guy.

He nuzzled his nose into her neck, an arm hooked around her waist as he worked his fingers in and out of her ass. She was already wet and dripping from the beckoning of his fingers, but it wasn’t enough.

Her left hand, the one not holding _Zen’s_ , was closed around his cock, pumping it with her gentle fingers, occasionally squeezing whenever he touched somewhere that made her sigh a sharp – _ah!_ He loved her touch, and he loved her cute responses, but it was never enough. Why did he have to be so goddamn greedy? He felt so ashamed of how much more he endlessly wanted from her. _More._ He smoothed his hands across her skin. _All._

He swallowed. Why was he crying?

With a breath, Saeyoung rested his cheek on her shoulder, eyes closed, two fingers still slowly stretching her out. She’d been getting progressively warmer with Zen’s movements…

_“Saeyoung…”_

His heart skipped a beat. The syllables seemed to melt in him, his heart and his mind. Something washed over him, and he faintly kissed her shoulder before putting his hand over hers, taking it from his cock and putting it over his beating heart as he used his other hand to slowly guide himself to her dripping entrance.

\--

He was so big inside you… You’d never tried this even with Jumin before, and it hurt. But the way that he whispered your name between a string of love-words and curses in your ear and the pounding of his heart beneath your fingers that he held against his chest. The way that he touched you everywhere else was enough to soften the pain and make you crave for him to go deeper into you.

**Zen & Saeyoung**

They rocked into her together, sometimes all at once, and sometimes one after the other, so that she could not recover from the force or the pleasure of their thrusts before the next one hit her. Her back was arched, falling back onto the hacker, the actor’s hand on her waist to keep her from falling completely. It felt like a million degrees in that bedroom, perhaps more specifically, on that bed.

The sounds coming from their mouths were breathy and hot, muddled and littered with gasps and groans. For a while, they kept an even rhythm, thrusting into her heavily, but just not enough to make her scream. But someone hit a point, and out of her lips tumbled a _“There! There!”_ and all of a sudden, neither of them cared who was responsible, and they both rammed into her with a release that had been held back for far too long.

\--

Your shouted moan only made them ram into you harder, all of your voices dissolving into the lewd, wet sounds of skin slapping against skin. You could hear Zen and Saeyoung moaning from all sides, as if their voices were the only things in the atmosphere, like their voices were the air you breathed in. Even if they weren’t thrusting in and out of you so hard, the sound of their voices would’ve probably been enough for you to –

_Aah!_

Your loudest moan yet as your orgasm forces you to clench around the both of them, and soon after, your climax is shared as you hear them call out – Zen calling your name, Saeyoung blurting out a mess of moans that he muffled by biting into your shoulder. Zen had managed to pull out in time, hot white cum, as if matching his hair, spurting all over your stomach, sticky and wet. Saeyoung hadn’t been as concerned, and your hips bucked into him as his warm cum filled you up, the sensation of it making tears form in the corners of your eyes.

_Was that… Did all that… Just…_

\--

Your head is so fuzzy that it hurts, your eyes are squeezed shut. You can feel Zen’s cool hand brushing back the hair sticking to your face.

“I…”

Your chest heaves, it’s almost completely impossible to breathe.

“MC…you did great.”

Your face is cold but your body feels like fire. Your core still aches.

“That was so good… Did you feel it, too?”

You can’t tell if it’s reality catching up to you or insanity pushing you further over the edge.

“I…”

“MC…”

" _Jumin_ …"

“Are you…”

You fall to your side into the comfort of the mattress, too numb to curl into a foetal position like usual.

“Please…please go…”


	22. The Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time 2 no

_“Please go…”_

Tears spill when you squeeze your eyes shut. God, how many tears have you bled in these past few days alone? You breathe heavy, slow breaths, and gradually, your burning skin is cooled by the cold air of the room, and when you open your eyes, the two of them are gone.

Your heart steadies. You peel yourself from the sheets so that you can take a look at the world from this new dreadful point of view.

Oh. There’s a glass on the bedside table. It’s a small glass milk bottle. The instance feels familiar but not really. You stand, pulling the kimono over your shoulders and tying it, your feet meeting the carpeted floor, somehow an alien and unfamiliar sensation. You pick up the milk bottle, confused for a moment as you unscrew the little lid.

The cap falls easily from your feeble fingertips.

“Ah…”

You look down at your feet, but the bottletop isn’t there. So you reach into the right-hand pocket of your kimono to find it, but your finger touches something else instead. Something gel-like and wet. Hm? You replace the bottle onto the bedside table and remove the object from your kimono. It’s too small to recognise at first, so you bring it closer to your eyes, and then the eye stares back at you.

You screech, and fall, and what, what – this bright yellow contact lens on the tip of your finger, it’s glaring into you like it wants to burn into your skull. _God…_ Your entire body tremors, your fingers shaking violently as flashes of that voice and those eyes steal back your ability to breathe like a hand yanking back a string.

_“You’re so silly…”_

Your shoulder slams into the side of the bedframe as you tumble backwards, the wrenching strain and piercing within your chest dauntingly spreading towards your neck.

_“I’m going to make it so that you will never say his name ever again.”_

You can feel your throat burning up, as if a rope of thorns is tightly choking you from the inside.

_“Okay?”_

You cough and grasp desperately at your throat, the eye falling from your finger but searing into your pupils.

“Ju – Jumi…”

You have to say his name. You must say his name. You can only say his name. You have to you have to you have to. Or he won’t love you anymore. He won’t, wouldn’t he?

_“Don’t touch me!”_

You force your eyes shut, but the image of that eye – _those_ eyes, penetrating yellow and evanescent green – those glowing, spectral eyes as they saw right through you and became so quickly repulsed by what their sights revealed; that look of abhorrence is still branded on the inside of your eyelids.

_“You’re fucking disgusting!”_

Isn’t it true? Even as you cough and splutter, struggling against the invisible forces scratching at you inside and out, you know there’s truth in all of it. _You’re disgusting._

_“You’re so fucking repulsive, you disgusting, adulterine slut!”_

And the sensations of strangulation and pain suddenly disappear, just as quickly, as suddenly, replaced by this overwhelming sense of discomfort and disgust, like there are a million little centipedes and earwigs crawling over and pincing at your skin and flesh. _It’s so disgusting._ You’re filthy all over. Your body feels disgustingly sticky and humid, and you need, you need, you need to get clean

You push your body over onto your hands and knees – the bathroom is only a few metres away. That can wash you. That can at least wash away what happened. _Right?_

_“You’re too fucking busy trying to fuck everyone else and use everyone around you.”_

Fuck _. Fuck._ Your nails claw at the carpet as you struggle to heave yourself forward. Your knees smack against each other with each awkward, laboured pull.

All of this time, you’ve been so desperate for touch that you risked losing the one hand you wanted to hold the most.

_“No wonder that executive chairman avoids you.”_

Shit. Fuck. Your hand reaches the icy tile of the shower floor. You twist your body onto it, the pull straining at the restless, rousing nerves eating away at your deteriorating flesh. “Fuuuck…” your body whines. The overwhelming ache is twisting mercilessly at your insides. You cough and throw up into the shower drain.

_“Look at you.”_

You’d spewed up mostly alcohol. Tears splatter into the wretched mess. You sob now; pathetic, quiet sobs as your hands fumble with the hot and cold knobs of the shower. One of them finally yields to your hasty attacks and curls back a full turn.

Ah.

It’s cold water.

Like rain.

_“Look at you, exposed and shameless.”_

You close your eyes, letting the water soak into your clothes and your hair and your skin.

“Jumin…” you say, giving in.

Wasn’t it nice when he once loved you? But now he loves…he loves that girl. That girl...her name was Rena Jun. _Isn’t that a pretty name?_ You’d never thought that he’d be the type to cheat, but then again, neither did he of you. It’s funny how little the two of you really knew each other in this end. Isn’t it? After all, you’ve really only known him for…ah, three months and almost three weeks. That’s less than fifteen weeks. You wonder how long Rena Jun has known Jumin for. Jahee had said that she was one of the newer assistants, but you don’t remember ever hearing about Jumin hiring new employees, so she might have been accepted a little bit before that very first chatroom, maybe longer. That means she would have known him for longer. Known him better.

You lean your head back against the tiled wall, giving in.

_“Women like you are repulsive pieces of shit.”_

You chuckle. Then the chuckle turns back into your ugly sobs. How pitiful. You were never good for him from the very beginning. The question you should have asked wasn’t whether or not he would still love you like this, but whether he _should_. And you already know the answer. He shouldn’t.

_He shouldn’t._

Your sobs grow heavy, and you’re thankful for the cold water pelting against you.

_He shouldn’t._

How funny it is, how many tears and how many emotions you could have salvaged for a rainy day if you had just realised that definitive answer from the start.

Jumin had always been too good for you. He’d needed someone reliable and understanding, and he’d found that in Rena Jun. You needed someone tender and present. Still needing. So it doesn’t matter how much you wish you could stay on Jumin’s route your entire life, you had never belonged there. You wonder if you really belong on any route at all.

_Ha._

.

“MC?”

 _Ah?_ You sit up and switch off the cold water. The voice had been high-pitched and callow. You know who it is, and now you begin to wonder if they all just really love to mess with your feeble, breaking heart.

 


	23. Yoosung

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chap is  
> 2 long 2 strong  
> 4 baked beans and a subway footlong

You can hear his footsteps approaching the bedroom. He’s getting closer. He’s going to see you. See you like this.

A new growing panic arises within your chest and throat as you quickly, hastily push off of the shower floor and make a desperate scramble, on your hands and knees, towards the bathroom door, frantically tugging it shut when you reach it. You stop, heaving an anxious sigh of relief to see it closed; a safe wall between you and someone pure. You crumple, resting your back against the door, your breaths still rapid and uncontrolled. There’s silence for a moment. And then you hear him say your name again, closer, now.

“MC?” You can hear him at the door. His voice is all worry and concern.

 _“Yoosung…”_ You reply. You close your eyes and pull your knees to your chest, trying to steady your breathing. At least you’re not so fuzzy anymore…

“MC, are you okay? Seven messaged me a while ago but I didn’t get it until after class. Did something happen? Are you alright?”

His voice… Yoosung’s voice is so unassuming and kind, always bright and rosy regardless of context or situation. You bite down on your lip to tell yourself to stop. If you let his heart touch you, you might end up opening the door. You can’t…

_“Yoosung…please…go.”_

There’s a pause. You hear his breath, now shaky, through the closed wooden door.

“Please…please don’t say that, MC…” he says, finally, quietly, “It’s so terrible for me when you become lonely like that. I feel so helpless when I know you don’t want to be alone, but you still choose to be lonely.”

You lean back into the door, water still dripping on the floor from your hair and sodden slip. You don’t know whether you really want him to leave or to stay – but no, you already know the answer to the question. He shouldn’t. Shouldn’t stay. Shouldn’t stay.

“Yoosung, I’m – I’m _…_ dirty. I’ve been really bad. I don’t want to stain you, too. _Please…_ ”

There’s the sound of his hand sliding against the slab of wood separating the two of you. It’s a strangely comforting sound. Why does his voice have to be so comforting, too…

“You won’t, MC. I…last night…” _Last night…_ “If – if you’re worried about last night, then you –” his breath hitches “—you don’t have to worry about it! I can forget it! We can pretend…pretend it never happened, just – just please don’t think that you can hurt me, or stain me. You can’t… couldn’t…”

You put your face in your hands and shake your head in part grief and part despair. _This boy…_

“God, Yoo–Yoosung! Please stop playing nice. I got drunk and had sex with Seven and Zen. Is that what you need to hear? I had sex with them. I let them touch me, Yoosung, I let them –” _Ow…why does your heart…_ “—I – I…I let them _touch_ me! I – I screwed up, Yoosung. Yoosung, Yoosung, do you know I screwed up? Do you know that – that I’m disgusting? And – and repulsive – and filthy – and dirty – and gross? Do you know that Jumin –” _Jumin._ “—Jumin, he – he won’t… _love_ me…anymore. And…and maybe he never has…maybe I never really knew him, either… I don’t know…we weren’t…right. I think I chose the wrong route, Yoosung. I can’t go back anymore. And I don’t want to drag you down with me.”

.

It’s quiet.

.

Is he still there?

.

Should you check?

.

Should –

“MC…”

Your breath catches. His voice…

“MC…”

It’s almost like a sweet lullaby in all but two soft, sweet syllables.

“You’re not dirty.”

_Please stop…_

“And you’re not disgusting.”

_Don’t stay…_

“And you’re not repulsive or filthy or gross.”

.

“And I may have only known you for four months, but you’ve told and shown me a lot more beyond that. I know who you are, and how you are. And I don’t think for a second that one day’s mistake can take away every year of kindness you’ve given to this world. Especially not the four months you’ve given me.”

You stifle your breathing with your hand. Your chest, it hurts.

“I get how you’re feeling, MC… I know mistakes…bad mistakes…hurtful mistakes… And I know that they only define a fraction of who you are. But more than that, more than anything, it’s who you’ve been all along that really counts. I remember a lot of things that would dwarf whatever fraction of a mistake you’ve made. All these memories in these four months alone with you.

“Remember in our chat, the third day you joined the RFA?”

Of course you remember.

“You said something about the weather getting warmer. And I – I was in my lecture later that day, but all I could think of was whether or not the heat would make you feel bad inside Rika’s apartment. I ended up knee-deep in BikiHow articles on how to install wall-mounted air conditioners because I really wanted to put one up for you. Did you know that?”

_No…Yoosung…_

“And that time you came over to my house to make kimchi with me just a week after the RFA party. That was the first time I’d ever felt so happy in my life. You were so nice, MC… I felt kind of guilty, because I imagined that I had you all to myself that day. And even though you smelled like onions half the time, and your hair was all a mess by the end of it, I really thought you were the most beautiful sight in the world. Haha…I’m being cheesy…”

_Ah…no…_

“I remember when you got salt all over your cheeks, and I was riding on such a high that day that I was brave enough to hold your face in my hands and lean in, and I pretended to lick it off of you…I remember your cheeks went bright red, and your eyes went all shy…and you were so perfect in that moment that I saw you. That’s when I finally figured out that you liked me. A bit late, but…haha…it made me really happy, even though I couldn’t tell you why I was smiling so much…”

_You still…_

“And that day at the beach. You were so cute, I couldn’t stand it. I just wanted to gather you up into my arms all day but I wasn’t brave enough. But when the sun was setting and I had you there, standing in front of me, so real and so captivating to me. God…I wanted to kiss you so so bad. I wanted to at least hold you really tightly in my arms. But I was worried that it would make you have to avoid me. So I didn’t. I wish I did. No matter the consequences. I just wish I’d held you more, and I would’ve if I’d known you’d really end up drifting away from me after that…”

_Ow…your heart…_

“MC…when you kissed me yesterday, I thought I’d die. I was so scared…I was so scared that I’d accidentally do something wrong and you’d stop. I just didn’t want to stop having you beside me. I just wanted to keep looking at you. To see you…to look into your eyes and have you look back at me. I wouldn’t trade that in for anything in the world. I…I’ve loved you for the longest time, and I don’t think you ever knew.”

Why…do you still have so many new tears to shed?

“And there’s something else I need to tell you, too.”

You sit up, confused. _What could it be?_

You hear a metallic click.

“The door’s actually been unlocked this entire time.”

It opens, and you turn around on your knees to see Yoosung – the perfect, shining boy. His eyes bear over you, taking in the sight of your wet hair and soaked kimono. “MC…” He drops to his knees and hugs you, quickly, and so suddenly the world feels the slightest bit clear again.


	24. Cupboard Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I bet Yoosung's tears are as sweet as he is.

“MC,” he says, looking at your wet kimono. You pinch the cold fabric between your fingers, remembering. “There are clothes in my wardrobe…” You hoist yourself onto one knee, beginning to get up, but Yoosung stops you with a hand to your shoulder, then hurriedly moves to pull off his blue hoodie, leaving his green and white tank top underneath. He holds the hoodie at arm’s length to you, turning away.

“I don’t want to see you in his clothes…” is the only explanation he gives you. You quickly remove your wrap and pull the hoodie over yourself. It hangs like a dress. You take Yoosung’s hand to tell him that you’re done, beginning to lift yourself up off of the wet ground. He stands, too, and you slip, half from the puddle on the tiles, half from the weakness in your legs.

He catches you quickly and lifts you up onto him so that you can wrap yourself around his waist, your bodies pressed together. You feel like a mammal clinging onto its parent. Feels strange that it’s Yoosung. He’s unexpectedly strong. You don’t know how you should feel about that. You hold him tighter.

“Let’s get out of here, MC. I hate seeing you in this apartment. It’s like seeing a bird in a cage.”

-

You’re lying in his lap on the taxi. His hand is warm on your shoulder. You’re not sure how you’d gotten into this position, but it had felt so natural in the moment. You try very hard not to think about a different hand stroking your hair.

“MC…” he says, soft and rosy.

“Hm?”

You turn over in his lap to look up at him. He looks so cute at this angle, too. His eyes are shiny.

“I don’t…I want you to know that I don’t…expect you to love me…in this timeline.”

You furrow your brow.

“I really love you, MC. But this isn’t the rou–…this isn’t the way…I…I know that you can’t…”

His eyes are really shiny. You reach up and touch his cheek. His cheeks are rosy warm. This boy…

“I really just want you to keep looking at me. That’s all you can give me. I just want to be selfish right now and let myself feel like I have you all to myself, just for this day, like the first day we spent together at my house. Just for today, MC. Please smile with me, or cry with me if you need.” His hand is on your cheek, too. He’s soft.

“Yoo…”

“I don’t need anything else,” he says quickly, “I don’t want you to touch me, even. Just being beside you is enough… I don’t want you to do anything. Okay?”

You nod your head, even though you don’t know what he means.

“It means I love you,” he says, as if reading your mind.

-

He unlocks his front door and you step into his apartment. It’s the same as last night, but it feels safer and more familiar somehow.

“Tea?”

“Yeah,”

“I’ll make you some matcha.”

You wait on his couch, staring at the black screen of the TV, your toes digging into the nice soft carpet. The cushion of the couch is malleable in your scrunched hands. “Yoosung…”

He walks over from the kitchen, as if responding to your whispered call. He’s carrying two steaming mugs with a gentle smile. He presents one to you, and you loosen your grip on the cushion to take it, the warmth subduing the ache in your fingers. You whisper a thanks, and he sits down on the other side of the couch, putting down his cup.

“D’you want some fresh clothes? I could –”

“Yoosung,” you say, looking down at the mug in your lap, “Yoosung, did you really mean… everything…”

He stops and stares down at his lap, too. “I did, MC. I really did. I really just… needed you to know. I wouldn’t be able to stand it otherwise. I was scared I wouldn’t have another chance to tell you if I didn’t…”

“Yoosung, I love you, too.”

.

.

You hear him take a single soft, shaky breath.

“I...know what you’re going to say next, MC. Please…don’t say it for a moment. I just want to feel this way a little bit longer.”

“I won’t say it,” you promise.

Yoosung wipes at his wet eyes with one hand, and his other reaches towards yours, which is resting on the cushion beside your leg. He brushes against the side of your hand, and, softly, he laces his pinkie with yours, like a delicate, faintly vow.

You turn to him, your other hand now sinking into the cushion as you lift your knees onto the couch. “Yoosung,” you whisper, “Yoosung, I…”

_I don’t think he loves me anymore, anyway._

Your lips press against his skin, and you can feel him shudder from the contact. “…love you, too…” It means something else this time, and you can tell he knows this, too. You kiss his neck, and his jawline, and slowly, you climb closer into his lap, your hand touching the skin of his navel from underneath his tank top.

He stops you. He grabs your shoulders and pulls you back, so that your faces are level, so that he can look into your eyes, so that you can look back.

“MC!” he calls out, anxious. “MC!” he says again, and his eyes are wet again; they’re pained, and sad.

“Promise me!” he’s begging you, his tears sure and glistening, “Promise me you’ll go back, and we’ll do it right this time. Promise me we’ll have a good end together.”

You only look at him, and the little dews in his eyes roll down his cheeks like tentative drops of rain on…glass windows…

“Please,” he whispers.

There are tears down your cheeks, too. The glass breaks.

Your lips quiver, but no words come out. His grip on your shoulders go weak. You look at him, your eyes look into him, and you gradually lean in to press your lips to his; to love.


	25. Sweet Honey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um. sorry? yeah

_“Ah!”_

You’re rubbing against him through his slacks, straddling his hips, your forehead resting against his chest. His hands are placed loosely on either side of your waist, barely there, while his heartbeat against your ear hammers loudly enough for you to recognise. A strong blush had fallen over Yoosung’s cheeks, his expression now strained and troubled as he makes his best attempts to stop himself from making another strange, erotic sound.

But this just won’t do.

You stop your movements in order to kiss him gently on that subtle protrusion of his clavicle, the delicacy of its complexion and softness of its warmth so particularly contradicted by the hardness of its chiselled form. His attempts at holding back his expressions endure, but his truths are clear to you the moment you begin to move from his lap, and you can hear his faint whine of disapproval, ever so light and still so vulnerable. That sweet melodic voicing of his involuntarily asserted disapproval makes your beating heart begin to spin so rapidly like a set of new bicycle wheels speeding down a smooth, slippery, sliding slope.

You scrunch the hem of his shirt in a tight fist and artlessly pull it up to his mid-chest. You utter a brisk “hold this”, to which he immediately complies, nervously gripping the bundle of white cotton fabric inside his closed hand.

His eyes widen visibly as you undo his zipper, sliding them down just far enough below his waist for his briefs to be entirely exposed. You glance at him quickly, as if anticipating a whispered word ‘no’ or a belligerent call ‘stop’, before you move on to slip your hand below his briefs to take out his half-hard cock. He winces. His mouth opens and his lips begin mouth the start of an ‘M’, but he doesn’t seem to have the voice or the full will to properly sound out the entirety of your name. Oh, he’s so…

You exhale, now carefully grasping Yoosung’s erection in your hand, starting to stroke it gently, almost experimenting with this new unfamiliar length. Yoosung’s cock is the perfect size in your eyes; he could probably fill you to the hilt, giving you all the pleasure without the unneeded pain. _Ah._ The thought makes your fingers quiver around his length as you carefully brush your thumb across his tip. Yoosung gasps at the sudden sensation and, so easily, your heart begins to chorus with a newfound longing desire, and you lean in closer to him to give his head an initial lick.

His cock instantly twitches, and it’s all you could do not to just take him all into your mouth. You’re beginning to get too worked up about it. He’s so cute. Yoosung. Yoosung. You hum that name between your lips as you take the head of his cock inside your mouth. His hips react, jerking involuntarily upwards, deeper in your mouth, and you can already taste a bit of his precum, sweet as honey.

“Mn…”

“MC!” Yoosung sounds. It’s almost reminiscent of a whimper. “If you – keep doing that – I’m going to – ah –”

 _Oh._ How on earth could this boy be so cute with teardews forming in the corners of his eyes and his cock deep inside your mouth?

Shit.

This just won’t do.

You close your eyes, lowering your head to take more of Yoosung into your mouth. One of your hands snakes its way to your hips, reaching under your panties to your sex, already wet with want for the pleasure between your lips. You momentarily resist that overpowering urge to emulate his movements inside of you with your fingers, focusing instead on sliding down your panties which are loosely hooked around your wrist, gliding down your bare thighs. You bend your knees towards your hips to let the little piece of cotton reach your ankles, which you leave for a moment, like handcuffs, before kicking them off and away for good measure.

“Unh – M – MC…”

Your fingers return to your sex, sinking inside yourself, and you begin to feel it, too.

“Ughn –”

This.

This just won’t do.

You lift your head, Yoosung’s pulsing cock leaving your mouth with a lewd, wet ‘pop’. You can almost hear his heartbeat even from here. His eyes are shining, wet, full of a sense of both wonder and worry for what he knows is about to happen next.

\--

“MC – ngh – I’m sorry – I can’t – take it – anymore…”

Yoosung grabs your shoulders and shoves you backwards, your head now resting on the opposite arm of the couch with Yoosung towering over you, his eyes, like fire, like a loving, both gentle and fierce fire, like a

A shining star.

And this shining star in front of you takes your wrists in his warm hands, pulling them up to rest beside your head, his hips now helplessly thrusting into you with a hasty, rushed rhythm, throwing your heart into your throat and your senses into the distant, gleaming night sky.

“Ah! Yoo – _sung!_ ”

There are little bright white spots forming in the corners of your peripheral vision, your eyes falling back to your lashes. But you can still hear his disjointed moans with every thrust of him inside of you and the lewd squelches of wet skin against skin; you can still smell the faint fragrance of his salt-tinged sweat, the slight touch of his watermelon and cinnamon cologne, and that distinct scent of sex smothering the thick, humid air around you both; and most of all, you can feel so explicitly his hot pulsing cock pounding in and out of your cunt with not a hint of a plan to withdrawal.

“Eunh…s-sung…”

Your moans are almost embarrassing at this point, barely audible over the sound of his hips slapping into yours, his rock hard length ramming deeper and deeper into your cunt. But you can tell he can hear you, that he wants to hear you, needs to hear you say –

“Yoosung…” you breathe, your body being shoved into the couch cushion with each of his heavy thrusts. “Fill…fill me up…” his grip tightens around your wrists involuntarily, his eyes now locked on yours with transfixed attention, even as the ecstasy of your sex threatens to take all conscious thoughts away.

A loud, lucid gasp abandons your throat, and all at once a little bit changes – could his cock have gotten even bigger inside of you? Yoosung’s eyes are suddenly glazed over with a new unfathomable expression, one that thrills you in ways both frightening and exhilarating. A weak smile falls upon his lips, and he makes his first, most forceful thrust into you.

The force of it makes your knees convene, your legs tangling around his waist. Your eyelids flutter, and you see only flashes of Yoosung’s wanton face between darkness and flooding light.

“MC –”

“Yoo…sung…” your voice is raspy and high-pitched, desperate for more, for him. You can’t hold back.

“Yoosung…fill me…up…to the brim…”

He doesn’t need to be told a second time. His next thrust is stronger than the last, and the one afterwards comes barely a moment after the one before it, and he keeps going, faster, harder, and unrelenting, each thrust accompanied by a grunt or groan that sends you surely to the edge of death, catching you a moment before you fall into the darkness. His fingers leave your wrists, instead interlacing with yours as he rams into you with that wild lust and desire. More, more, and you can hear a hitch in his throat. Your legs gradually tighten around his waist as the pressure building between your cores continues to accumulate more and more. More, more, and his thrusts become almost violent, his grunts louder, his fingers around yours growing tighter. More, more, and the pressure builds, it builds, and it reaches, it reaches a boiling point, and just when the force of your climax threatens to break you –

_“Ahhhgn!”_

Ah. Ah. Owh. Oh. Oh.

Yoosung collapses on top of you, his weight anchoring you to the reality of the sensation still throbbing in your sex. Your breathing comes in unison, both heavy, both heated and depleted. You untangle your fingers from one of his hands to thread them through his soft blond hair instead. He’s so soft. He’s so…

Ah.

And you look up at the ceiling, the light blaring so unforgivingly down on you from above, and you remember in a bitterly sad kind of way. It’s a school night tonight.


	26. Taxi Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taxicab

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [day four]

The taxicab, it brings you incessantly further and further from the hum of residential Seoul and back into the passionate encompassing arms of the city, with all its sky-embracing scrapers and grey-blue hue of its endless sky.

How would home feel now?

You remember, so clearly, what home _once_ felt like. From view of the taxicab window, home once felt like a spark of relieved excitement and sanctum. You’d look forward more to the satisfying click of the door signalling your return to the reality that made sense to you rather than the car ride itself, with a cityscape that never used to interest you until now, now that it is all you ever want to see anymore, like a promising limbo from the duty of guilt you must feel the moment that door is relieved of its locking switch with its nimble clack. The smell of the breakfast you’d made this morning in Yoosung’s house still lingers on your clothes; a simple shirt and pair of jeans that he’d said his sister had left there. His voice echoes.

 _“You’re going back to see him.”_ Yoosung had said as he’d sipped his cup of earl grey, the cup nestled snugly in his soft, winsome hands. _“Right?”_

Perhaps across any other tongue, the interrogative might have been considered impudent or harsh. But from Yoosung’s, with that lilt of voice and the subtle faltering of his expression in that moment that you saw him, it was just sad. Sad masked with a brave façade of casualty. You had lowered your eyes to the bottom of your cup, staring down the pale orange-brown, the yellow highlights of its colour shining in a lighted ring around the bank of honey gold against cream-white ceramic. You had wondered there for a second how those three little bits of tea leaf had found themselves nestled there as well, and then you had uttered a steady “yes”.

Ah – the taxi passes by that multi-coloured building that had always caught your eye by surprise. You think you’ve grown to like it, now. The taxi stops with a screech at a red light, and the driver quips a quick “sorry”.

The pale yellow of Yoosung’s apartment door flashes before your eyes again. You’d known he wouldn’t have wanted to hear that word from you, the apology more selfish than self-atoning. But you’d wanted to say it so badly as you stood there, in front of that pale yellow door, his forehead resting gently against yours. “Please see me…in your next life…” he’d said, then pulled back to push cab fare into your palm, embracing you one last time before running to catch the bus to his morning lecture, leaving your voice empty of words.

You put your hand to your mouth to stifle the sound you don’t make anyway. The taxi driver asks if you’re okay. You shake your head, then realise that that wasn’t the answer you’d meant, and quickly nod to assure him you won’t end up sicking all over his upholstery.

You don’t feel sick at all. You just feel. A twist.

The taxicab stops and you leave the cab fare with the driver when you exit. You close your eyes before entering the building to the ‘hello’s and ‘how are you’s of the employees in the foyer. You reply tersely, distractedly. You don’t want to talk to them. You just want to get out of these clothes that still belong to Yoosung.

The metal handle of the door is cold in your palm. You hesitate before entering the passcode. The final number lingers on your fingertip. You try to think of what memory you should forget with. You rest your forehead against the door, eyes closed one more time. There’s nothing not to love about Yoosung, and that is the problem with Yoosung. You inhale, then exhale, then turn the doorhandle to the select memory of his lips as he’d left down the hallway this morning, how he’d turned to you just before turning the corner to mouth the words ‘I love you’. You think of this and open the door to the sight of something both old and new. And Saeyoung there, as well.

Your whole body stiffens at first, a shot of ice and static shooting through you like fire. You’re not sure why you’re only scared of the sight of him now when you’ve already seen the real Saeyoung again. Maybe it’s that window, or that Zen isn’t here this time, or the fact that you can’t see the colour of his eyes with his back turned away from you.

But he’s just sitting on the floor by the window, and when he turns, his face lights with his calm, weak smile at the sight of your presence. You see his eyes, and they’re slightly red, but not from anything external this time. They’re his real shade of bright yellow. You know it’s Saeyoung for sure. But you still feel a hint wariness within you. You choose to rest your thoughts, and your mouth smiles back at him.

The strain at your lips is weak like his, and Seven understands.

He understands, and he’d been on the edge of tears this entire time understanding what his brother had done.


	27. Mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's even pretty when he's sad.

You rush to kneel in front of Saeyoung’s figure, taking his face in your hands and surveying his entire body, as if trying to find the physical cause of his apparent emotional distress. But there’s something mesmerising about Saeyoung’s face when he’s sad. Even as your platonic duties call for you to put a stop to his current misery, there’s something special about seeing him so defenceless and needy, because it’s just so rare seeing Saeyoung being this honest. But your platonic duties come first.

“Saeyoung, are you –”

He grasps your hands suddenly, pulling them to his chest. His are eyes worried and fearful.

“MC…MC, before…the lady at the foyer told me that she saw me come here yesterday morning. I told her that I came in the afternoon; I didn’t see her, but she told me she was one hundred per cent sure I was here at eleven on the dot and left at two. She told me my eyes looked sore. I thought it was weird. But I thought about it…and I thought about that glitch yesterday…

 “MC…Saeran came here yesterday, didn’t he? He made the glitch. He was here, and you were here, too. You saw him. That’s why, yesterday, you…” Saeyoung brings your hands to his lips, pressing them there for a moment, his eyes closed. When he opens them again, they’re inquisitive, asking you questions all on their own. Your hands are shaking.

“…Saeran may have hacked the security cameras to remove any footage of him coming here, but… Jumin installed some other ones a long time ago, ones that weren’t connected to anything digital. I came here this morning, and you weren’t home, so I found each of the cameras myself and extracted the footage from them. I looked at it all just before you got here.”

You stare at him, suddenly feeling frozen like the glass of the window.

No, no, _no._

“The cameras, they – they were only set up at the door and the hallway. There were none out here and the bedroom. But I saw him…Saeran took you to the bedroom. It was at twelve. He was in there with you for two hours, MC. What did he do? Tell me. _Please_. Did he do anything to you? Did my brother _hurt you_?”

_Hurt you?_

_Hurt you?_

It’s like a surge of ice that sears through your bone and skin, shooting through you like a fiery bullet, like…like fingers; cold, pallid fingers, tickling down your bare spine – the memories of those two hours after Saeran had carried you to your bedroom are returned to you within less than half a single second.

.

.

.

_Hurt you?_

.

.

.

 “M-MC? God, MC, did he really…”

There’s something really mesmerising about Saeyoung’s face when he’s so sad and pained. _But platonic duties come first._ You look at him and take a breath: “No.”

Saeyoung’s eyes are wide.

“Yeah…no, I – I’m just trying to remember, but, I think he just drugged me with something,” you make your lips smile, make it a sheepish smile, then widen your eyes too in a fabricated expression of hurried explanation when you see Saeyoung’s face become fearful –

“Don’t worry, though! It wasn’t anything strong, it just…I woke up and I was really confused. But I remember now…uhm…he came in the door dressed as you. I don’t think he expected me to be home, because he gave me this drug that made me all half-conscious. It’s really weird thinking about it now, haha, but I think he carried me to my bed right afterwards and left me there. I could still hear him moving about. I think he was looking for something – maybe, maybe Jumin’s files. Jumin brings a lot of important files home from work. I don’t know if he found anything, though, but I think I heard him leave angrily. He really didn’t interact with me at all otherwise. I think he muttered something about me being a bother…haha. I just…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, Seven, I just really didn’t remember…but it was okay. Nothing happened. I’m really a-okay.” You smile to him, convincingly.

.

.

“Oh…I’m…really glad…”

And the look in Saeyoung’s eyes, as if the sun had just started to shine after a full year darkness; that look in his eyes easily make it worth all the panicked adrenaline squeezing the air out of your heart. You take covertly deep breaths, soothing yourself quietly as you put your hands to his cheeks, your smile now genuine, now as relieved as he is.

“Saeyoung, come on, you look dead tired. There are bags under your eyes. Come on, you can borrow the guest room for a bit.” You stand and pull him up with you. He doesn’t waste a moment to pull you into his arms, lifting you up. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he murmurs into your shoulder, walking you to the hallway, “Let’s celebrate with a celebratory nap.”

“Eh, Saeyoung, I didn’t say I was sleeping, too,” you say, your arms wrapped around his neck despite, “and I haven’t given Elizabeth 3rd her breakfast yet.”

“I fed Elly already,” Saeyoung answers brightly. You can hear the smile in his voice. You really like it when he sounds like this. You really like it when Saeyoung is happy –

He stops for a moment at the guest bedroom. His demeanour turns serious for a bit. “MC…you’re sure he didn’t do anything else, right?”

.

You nod, even though he can’t really see it. “I’m one hundred per cent sure.”

He breathes out, and turns the doorknob. “I’m really happy, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~~~~~~~~~~bonus epilogue oooooo~~~~~~~~~~  
> (couldn't fit it in the chapter bc i refuse to publish another 900+ word chap screw u yoosung)  
> .  
> Mn. He brings you in closer to him, taking your head from your pillow and putting it to his collarbone. It’s safe here. You smile sleepily, your eyes closed.  
> “You’re always protecting me, Saeyoung.” You mumble.  
> “Of course. I’m God Seven.” His voice is sleepy, too.  
> “What’s Saeyoung, then, hm?” You barely even pay attention to your words in your half-conscious state. It’s so comfortable being close to Saeyoung.  
> “Mm…” It sounds like he’s sleep-talking. “Saeyoung was s’posed to be the true end...mm…I created the whole game just for you, y’know?”  
> Eh, pillow talk with Saeyoung is weird. But dreamy.  
> “…but…this story isn’t mine or for me, MC…it’s…mm…heart’s…for Jumin…”  
> You take his hand and hold it under the blankets, his lofty words like a bridge leading you to your sleep.  
> “Mmhm…but that’s okay…I love you anyway…MC…”  
> “…I love you, too…Saeyoung.”  
> “Mm…go back…to the…game…in a bit…yeah?”  
> “…yeah…I’ll love you there, too…”  
> “…good luck with Jumin…rooting for you…”  
> “…yeah…”  
> “Night,”  
> “Love you.” Muah.  
> Sleep.


	28. [MC]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tap tap

_Tap! Tap! Tap-tap-tap! Tacka-tacka-tap-tap-tap! D-ding!_

“What are you doing?”

_Tap-tap-tap! Tap! Tap tap tap! Tap-tap! Tacka-tap-tap! D-ding!_

You pause at the typewriter. It’s the one you had found at a flea market, with the damaged drawband and loose carriage. You'd so quickly made it your duty to fix it that day, even though it seemed like the most pretentious things to do. You were so determined, partly because of your crushing need to fix everything you see that is broken, and partly because of the way that the typewriter had appeared to you, all old-timey but still durable even with its age, and yet so fragile with its thin little type levers, holding up each key proudly and confidently. In your eyes, it was something so archaic but significantly robust, as if it had lived through so much more and knew so much more than you ever could, yet still had the ability to appear helpless, in need of mending and repair… Who did that remind you of, again? Ah –

Jumin rests his cheek on his palm, his elbow propped up on the edge of the table where he sits opposite you, the rapidly typing you. You remember his question.

“Writing,” you answer finally, with a secret smile.

“Mm? I didn’t know you wrote. What are you writing about?” He looks tired, and his voice is deep and soothing. You like him like this. You like him when his hair falls over his eyes, and his eyelids droop, and he’s not wearing his usual austere tailored suit, but instead a simple loose, comfortable blue cotton tee.

“You right now.”

“Hm, me? Is there much to write about me? I could hire a ghost writer if you’d like to write a biography. My father had a good one that I could…introduce…” He yawns, his eyes closing momentarily, his mouth open, his chin slightly turning upwards to show more of that pale skin on his neck. You like seeing Jumin in honest times like these. He’s so real. He’s not the Jumin Han that the media likes to gossip about and idolise. He’s yours. Only you and Elizabeth 3rd know this Jumin. You look at the cat across from you, the critter’s face peeking up from his lap, and exchange a knowing smirk. _Isn’t Jumin so cute like this, doing this, saying this?_ you ask her in your head. Somehow, even when he’s tired, on the very cusp of sleep, he still manages to find those sensible solutions to issues that don’t really matter at all. You smile to yourself now. You know you’ll write this part down, too.

“I don’t think that a ghost writer could say what I want to, even if they are very good. Just right now, I…want to write down how I’m seeing you… I don’t really write a lot, but I was thinking that a photo wouldn’t do any justice to how my mind is interpreting what I’m seeing. I want to remember exactly how I feel about who I’m looking at right now. I like this feeling. I think I like it a lot.”

_Ding! Tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap tap! Zzzzipppp!_

Usually when he’s awake and at full Jumin Han level, Jumin would reply with something extremely poetic and romantic like “even a hundred thousand words would not be able to define how beautiful I see you to be” or something sexy and suggestive like “would you like me to make you feel even better?” But it’s in moments like these, when he’s too adorable and sleepy to make up these words that take thought and reasoning to conjure up, and all his fried up brain could piece together is –

“I’m going to cuddle and stroke your hair…so much….that Elizabeth 3rd will become jealous and protest through purring.” Right on cue, the cat in question lets out a deep meow, almost as sleepy as Jumin, and he pampers her with some lazy petting.

You try to hide the butterflies in your chest from those simple words, smiling despite it all.

“And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

He smiles, then playfully covers Elizabeth’s ears and lowers his voice.

“I’ll wait until she falls asleep and then rush back to wrap you all up in my arms and blankets all over again. Like a…MC and Jumin burrito.”

You can’t suppress your chuckle. His lips respond with a sheepish smile, still resting dreamily on his palm.

“Ah, are you tired, lovely Jumin?” you half tease.

He nods, pouting. “Mmhm, lovely MC.”

“Why don’t you go to sleep, then, hm?”

He sits up at that, taking Elizabeth and lifting her up to his chest, his chin now between her ears.

“I was waiting for my lovely wife to come with me to bed.” He pouts behind the fur.

You chuckle again.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap! D-ding! Tap-tap-tap! Tap! Click-zzzzzzippp!_

“That’s funny, ‘cause I was just waiting for my lovely husband to take me to bed.”

“Mmhm?” His eyes widen for a moment, then he kisses Elizabeth 3rd on top of her head and places her on the ground, standing up and walking over to you. You turn in your seat to face him. “Arms,” he says, a contented smile on his sleepy face. You chuckle again and raise your arms, and he picks you up, kissing your forehead and holding you tightly to himself.

“Let’s go to sleep, Mrs Han.”

You chuckle into his hair. “I should have kept my surname.”

He nuzzles you behind your ear. “I like Mrs Han better.”

You wish the typewriter was still in front of you, because the _tap-tap-tap_ s are still going in your head with every word he says. You want to remember everything. You want to remember all of this, all of why you’re happier than all you’ve ever been or ever will be.

“I like it better, too.”


	29. Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is my heart; crush it.

There are sounds coming from outside.

Your eyes open. You mumble the remnants of a name between your lips and grasp at the air, reaching for warm bodily comfort but receiving a handful of empty cool bedsheets instead.

You sit up.

The sound, it’s footsteps. Footsteps that sound awfully familiar. Awfully…no… Could they…be…? You squeeze your eyes firmly shut and begin to listen intently, careful to be quiet, just waiting for the single right confirmation that it really is – ah – !

.

.

_ It’s _ … _ it’s him. _ Those are…his…footsteps.

Your arms. Your arms lose all sense of feeling and your legs, they turn into wet papier mâché. But still, those limbs of yours know well enough about your heart to force themselves out of the gentle warmth of the guest bed kept from the early hours of morning, and into the cold bite of this forsaken apartment’s air of every afternoon.

The synapses sprinting in your brain are screaming like mad, a single thought multiplying and overrunning in your mind like eager little rabbits, screaming  _ ‘It’s him! It’s him! Him! Him! Him!!!’ _

The pads of your feet, they scurry loudly against the icy cold tiles of the hallway – _him!_ – and your heart is stuck in your throat – _him!_ – and your thoughts are lodged in someplace that manages to completely and entirely deluge you inside the physicality, the truth, and the fulfilment of this tattered fantasy – _oh,_ _him!_ – you wonder what he looks like right now, and this; this relief, this fear, this crying excitement for something so long ached for, so finally coming so close to your so needing, your so begging, so outstretched little heartstrings.

It’s the entrance hall – the home of the front door and of the full-length windows that overlook the city below.

You see him, and there he is.

There.

He.

.

Is.

.

His grey eyes, wide

.

And, and if there were a million words at your disposal for describing the infinite possible ways you could ever see a man, you would end up sifting through that impossible index until the very end of your days like some common fool searching for red roses in a field of dying blue daisies. Oh, you know it, and you’ve known it for so long now, that there is not a single word in this crushing world that would ever be fit to completely define him the way he so purely defines you. Him.  _ Your  _ him _. _ Your skin and bone and flesh and blood, the every movement of your soul and every crevice of your heart and every worry in that weak and wounded head of yours. His eyes, grey and widened.

“…Jumin.”

Your voice, barely more than a croak, is pathetic and useless in this exchange of eyes, this exchange of his eyes, growing sad against yours.

Elizabeth 3 rd  circles his ankles, apparently unaware of the frozen stares extending across the room. He’s dressed in a new fitted black suit today, one you’d never seen him in before. The curves and precise cuts and seams of the tailored ensemble come together to exactly emphasise his tall, fixed and stony stature, his posture without hint of slouch or casualty. He’s wearing that tie that you picked out for your engagement party two and a half months ago. There’s a kiss mark peeking out from beneath his collar. His face isn’t… And his hair, it’s the intentional mess it usually is, but a portion of it is pushed back; you can’t tell if it’s intentional or not. Dark and pushed away, out of his wintry eyes.

You look up further, but there’s nothing left to focus on. Just him.

He picks up Elizabeth 3 rd and leaves for the door.

“Ju – wait!”

You run to him, and your hand reaches for his arm but stops short, suddenly scared that touching him might burn you.

He stops and turns to you; his eyes are despondent and empty, except for some hint of  – 

“Don’t touch me.”

He opens the door.

“Jumin!”

He turns back again, an expectant silence between the air, as if there could ever be something right to say at this moment. An apology? A demand for answers? A beg, a tear, an emotional breakdown that will never be fixed?

“Are you gonna…come home…tonight…”

Your fingers are clutching his sleeve. You can barely meet his eyes.

“I won’t. So let go.”

“I – will you be…”

“No, I won’t be alone tonight. So we won’t be so different after all.”

He pulls his arm away and closes the door behind him.


	30. [Jumin]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> check the word count 4 this chap

_This bottle of wine won’t drink itself._

It’s red, though technically more violet in hue. The wine glass slips smoothly in his hand, but still not perfectly enough. He brings the edge to his lips, a little gloomy, and the lights outside the window twinkle in its transparency. He lets the liquid touch his lips, then sets the glass back down onto his desk, not wanting.

_Four days._

Loneliness is a silly thing. It shouldn’t make sense to dwell on something you shouldn’t have. Like a picture of a rice cake. That’s what they say, isn’t it? _He’d like a rice cake right now._ Warm and nice. Warm and nice. _She’s warm and nice._

She’s warm. And lovely. Dammit, she’s so lovely. And if only he could tell her – if only he could _see_ her. Her lips were always his favourite wine. No – not wine. _Tea_. She was always too soft to sting the way that fermented grape does. Oh, she’s gentle, but with prominent tones and notes. Like second infusion balhyocha; sweet, whole, like love and honey menthol, with a smooth and full mouthfeel, swirling sublimely in his mouth. It’d be nice to have a tea ceremony with her. She would look so nice in a hanbok. _She’d look so nice in front of him right now._

 _Agh, but no point dwelling_ , he thinks to himself, dwelling. He deposits his face into his hands now, stretching his long fingers so that his eyes could glare between them at the wine glass reminding him of his duty and his work. His hair falls over his eyes, and he closes them, leaning back in his chair and emitting a silent exhale.

_I haven’t seen MC in four days._

Jumin opens his desk drawer, where he keeps the small frame his father had given him the day he’d started working. It was a framed piece of calligraphy, with rare words of encouragement:

고생 끝에 낙이 온다.

_At the end of hardship comes happiness._

But perhaps now, a counter would be fit –

일이 많으면 근심도 많다.

There are actually a lot of counters Jumin can come up with right now. But what’s the point? _I’m tired._ Those arms would be nice right now…

He holds down the pager for the desk on the sixty-seventh floor.

“Miss Jun. Come up now.” He looks up at the wineglass, and the mean wine bottle next to it. “This bottle of wine won’t drink itself.”


	31. [MC & Jaehee]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: jaehee is so ooc i'm sorry

Breakfast at 6. Spare parts store opens at 9. Attempt to fix typewriter with spare parts until about 11. Do laundry, finish early. Ask Jaehee to join for coffee at 12. Berate her about it until 12:10. Physically drag her out of Jumin’s office (stick tongue out at Jumin for giving Jaehee too much work to do) at 12:20. Bring her to the new café around the corner she’d expressed interest in but never had the time to go to by 12:30. Convince her to stop fussing about getting back to work. Convince her to order something sweet to eat with her coffee. Catch her small smile of hidden excitement when she thinks you’re looking away. Point it out and tease her so that she’ll blush and laugh and stop thinking about work. Tell her about your typewriter mishaps. Ask about Zen’s new theatre performance. Watch her get all excited about it. Be as excited as she is so that she’d get even more excited. See her go quiet and embarrassed when the waiter arrives with her coffee and cake. Be charmed. Listen to her shyly speak –

“Thank you…” she says softly before her first sip. “I really really wanted to go here…”

You grin, as if this was the most obvious thing to do. “Jumin’s really been overworking himself recently. He shouldn’t be forcing you to do the same.” You sip your own drink, eyes innocent.

“It _is_ my job after all…”

“Well, being my friend is your job now, too!”

Jaehee stops mid-sip, looking a bit confused and cute. “Eh? …Friend…job…?”

“Oh – um,” you try to piece words together, “like…you don’t have to put in any effort for it! It’s not like a Jumin job. It’s a ‘me’ job. We work together to help each other out and make the other person happy – no, Jaehee, you don’t have to take notes on this.”

“Oh,” she puts down her notebook. “Then what do I do?”

You beam and place your hands around your cup to warm them. “Be happy,” you say.

Jaehee only looks all the more confused.

“Be happy…?” she repeats, as if scribbling it down in the notebook inside her brain.

“Mhm,” you affirm, nodding.

“Oh…then you be happy, too, MC. I’d like that a lot.”

Be charmed. Talk with Jaehee until 2 (make sure she doesn’t find out the time until then). Gloomily take her back to the office at 2:10. Insist on a goodbye kiss. Fail to receive one as she runs back to her duties, muttering worriedly about her lateness. Call Jumin straight after. Convince him to let Jaehee off early today. And give her some time for coffee tomorrow as well. Promise you’ll help with the workload. Ask him if he’s coming home for dinner tonight. Look forward to tomorrow.


	32. Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> call me friend-a

 “No...Jaehee,” you say, sprawled callously upon the carpeted floor of the living room, your laptop open beside you with her consideration softly showering over you from within of the Swype call window.

She'd fervently insisted on the call; said she needed, needed, wanted to talk to you; no time for moping, not that you did mope as much as you did hide yourself under the pillows and blankets of the couch,  for some reason suddenly so determined and focused on escaping and fending away the light coming through those full-length windows. They were always there, so you had to hide, even when you’ve closed the blinds. Even when they couldn’t hurt you. They did hurt you. You hate looking through that shitty triple-paned fucking window. Who needs three panes when they all do the same thing? They all just hold you back from jumping down. You just want to know you can jump down if you wanted to. You'll never want to. But feeling like you can is a seldom-known precious little freedom.

_‘No, Jaehee, I don't want to hear any more.’_

But that's a lie, too, isn't it? You want to. Want to know more, because to you, to the you inside it all, Jumin’s self is still pure and loving to you. _Please, only you._

It’s scary knowing that you might not hear what you want. Scary knowing that not intending to jump down doesn't always mean you won't end up at the bottom anyway.

“MC, she’s a really good person.”

Rena Jun. She really did seem like a good person underneath the smudged make up the first time you saw her. You remember her eyes, they were so pretty, and so kind-looking.

You roll over on your side. Jaehee’s eyes fall over you, not hidden behind her black-rimmed glasses now that she is home for the first time this week. Her work clothes are lain over the arm of the couch behind her, but she’s wearing her sleeping jersey, and she looks warm. Her words aren’t so comforting.

You don’t want to know how good Rena Jun is, or how much everyone at the office loves her, or how polite she is or how generous she is or how hard working she is or how she and Jumin were friends from childhood. _Friends from childhood_. Where does that leave you? A girl from recent history not meant for forever. You’d always wanted a childhood friend. Well – but if there was to be a ballot on who would matter more, of course the childhood friend would count the most tickets.

Ah – Jumin from childhood…you wonder what he must’ve been like. Like now, probably, but smaller, lankier, with bigger eyes and messier hair, pink cheeks and a juvenile frown…and Rena Jun, chuckling beside him. And V, too. He’d probably have photos…

“But you’re the most good person I know.”

Eh?

You giggle, a smile spreading across your features. “‘Most good’,” you repeat, trying and failing to supress your little laughter, “I s’pose it’s better than being most bad.”

Jaehee falls red, but she’s smiling, too. “I meant most-good! With a – a hyphen! I just – just thought saying ‘greatest’ would lose the point I wanted to make…” She looks down (shyly?), presumably at her knees, cheeks still heated and pink. You stop your teasing laughter. “You’re good, MC…really, really good. When you care for someone, you care for them a whole lot, and you’re always smiling. I don’t think it’s really possible to…fall out of love with you.”

You grow more quiet, and elect to sit up, lifting your laptop to its namesake’s place. “Thank you, Jaehee,” you say, quiet. “It’s…my job to tell you the truth…a good friend’s job.” Jaehee looks up at you again, a small bit of soft content upon her lips. You mirror her, more widely. “Sounds like a better job than C&R.”

“MC! It’s not that bad…”

You laugh from your chest, the small bewilderment on Jaehee’s face resonating within it, and then there are teardrops streaming down your grinning cheeks. _Ow._ Jaehee’s so good, too. Jaehee’s so lovely, too. Jaehee’s so nice. She sets your fears and anxieties aside without making you forget their importance. Ah, and _owh._ Thank fuck for Jaehee. Someone to grab your hand before you slip away…

“Eh? MC?” You’ve been quiet for too long. You ignore the tears and look her right in the screen.

“Jaehee!!! I love you!!!” Your face is flushed with gratefulness and reprieve, your posture needlessly energetic and happy.

It’s Jaehee’s turn to scoff at you, hiding the lower half of her face with her hand.

“You love everyone, MC. I know that.”

“But I love you most goodly!!!”

Jaehee chuckles again and lowers her hand to show a full, elegant smile.

“MC…”

Her cell phone rings, and she looks to it then back to the screen, suddenly urgent.

“I’m sorry, MC, I have to go now; it’s the office. Oh – but I think it’s time to think back to the matter in our hands. Think about what I told you earlier, MC. I believe you can find your way through this. Good luck!” She picks up her phone before looking back at you with an encouraging smile, and then, as if impulsively, kisses the screen and disconnects.

Ah. Your fingers trail over your lips. _So nice…_

Then you fall back into the carpet, closing your eyes to smile a little. _What Jaehee told you earlier, around the beginning of the call…_ You’ll listen to her, because she’s the most good you know.


	33. Paper and Crashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: car accidents

Oh, it’s so quiet in the apartment now.

After going to feed Elizabeth, and realising she wasn’t there, you’d decided to sit by that same spot by the window again. Maybe it’s silly of you, but it’s kind of nice going back to routine, because you kind of remember feeling the hope that Jumin would come home. Ah, those lonely urban nights with…humming city lights. You almost catch yourself smiling in the glass. _What’s this?_ You must be hoping again. You think about this.

You’d married him about three months ago. The first month was a dream, even though your honeymoon had to be cut short after Jumin’s father had a heart failure and Jumin had to come back to manage the company while Mr Han Sr. recovered. Oh…you realise you haven’t asked about his dad in a while…

The next month was okay. You spent a lot of time with the others when Jumin had to work late. Was his dad still in hospital then? You didn’t want to bother him, so you waited patiently, and most of the time, he’d come home with that look of relief, like seeing you had fixed something inside of him. That felt so good.

The third month was when the returns home became less and less frequent, and you stopped preparing dinner just-in-case altogether, and the patch of carpet behind the window started becoming warmer. You remember the last time he had said ‘I love you’. It was a nice moment you didn’t remember to forget, and it’s sort of bittersweet that you didn’t. The typewriter had just been fixed for – what, the fourth time? Jumin had been fiddling with it before you’d gotten home – you hadn’t known he was coming home early. He’d looked a bit sad before he noticed you were home. He was replacing the ribbon spool, with such delicate fingers that you hadn’t felt in far too long. It was so nice watching him work in those precious seconds in which he hadn’t caught your footsteps. He picked up the device with the same kind of warmth and care he would give Elizabeth – perhaps even that which he would give you. A thought crossed you, then, and then it went away when he noticed you, and you said ‘I love you, Jumin’, and he smiled something bittersweet and said ‘I love you, too’.

Oh – it would be nice to remember that moment. You put a palm to the carpet and lift yourself up, brushing your knuckles one last time on the cool window surface before dashing back to your room to look for it.

The typewriter rattles just a bit, and it’s heavy, so you set it on top of the dresser first to grab some paper.

It’s weird how careless you could be with precious things.

There’s no clean paper – just old scraps that you’d written poems and recipes on before. And one of them says, just on the very top of the page, _‘To Sleepy Jumin’_ , in soft black letters, centred.

>             _Your hair gets all droopy when it’s late and you’re sleepy but not tired-sleepy. Like when you want to go to bed to lie down and feel the softness of the bed and not like when it’s been a really long day at work and you want to drop into the mattress with your suit still on just so that you could stop moving and your muscles could stop hurting._
> 
> _It’s sort of how I know and remember that we’d spent the majority of the day together, in the apartment in our pyjamas doing puzzles and trying different hobbies, like attempting to play guitar together and making up weird recipes that we’re too afraid to have more than two bites of._
> 
> _I like it when you look like a sleepy, spent, and barely functioning piece of human being, because it’s this you that proves I saw and felt you for more than just a few hours after work. You’re so dumb, Jumin. You don’t even know how beautiful you are just sitting in your sleepwear with Elizabeth in your lap, without anything else – any important apparel or evident proof that you are The Great Jumin Han, Executive Director of C &R International. I would add a TM but the typewriter doesn’t have a key for that so I’ll just pen it in later. But my point stands. You’re dumb because I like this kind of you best but you won’t ever show this to me unless I’m really really lucky. You’re dumb because I like this you so much but can’t see it all of the time. You’re dumb for making me wait for you._
> 
> _Whyyyyyyy do I love youuuuu?_
> 
> _You ask dumb questions and say beautiful words about the things that you feel and let your hair fall over your eyes when it’s really late at night and pet Elizabeth with love and tell me you like the music I make even though I can’t even move between the G and E chords on the guitar without stuffing up really badly. You’re so dumb but I like that you’re dumb because you love me and I love you and I don’t know why any of this matters when all I really really like is having you here with your stupid half-grin and silly words so just promise me you’ll_

Oh. You vaguely remember this. But not completely. You sit on the floor and close your eyes and try to remember. But now you’re starting to remember a different memory instead, a memory where Jumin is driving, like he never does, driving home from a day trip you had together to a mountain you both ended vouching not to climb, because isn’t it so much nicer just to walk to the nearest cat café and talk about balls of string and escapes instead?

You were too tired to drive, and it would’ve taken too long to wait for a driver, so Jumin promised to drive instead. He was concentrating really hard, but you were selfish, so you tugged on your seatbelt and lay down in his lap as he carefully gripped the steering wheel, squinting at signs and other cars. You were selfish, but he didn’t stop you, and gave your hair a soft pat instead of scolding you or pushing you away. It was getting dark, and even though there was little traffic, there were big trucks along the highway. There were a lot of other things. The wind was really loud, and everyone was going really fast. That’s why when something fell from the transport truck in front of you, and Jumin swerved sharply to avoid it, it all seemed like the end to you. And when it wasn’t, Jumin pulled you into him and hugged you so tightly, and you could hear his heartbeat, louder than yours, and his breathing, threaded with words of relief and gratitude and apology. You remember being scared, too, but you also remember feeling something else. It’s a strange, weird, morbid thing, but you remember realising that you might actually be okay with dying, if it was at least with him.

And now, on the floor of your bedroom, you have another realisation, and it’s that you love him still, and that you’re more scared of losing him forever than you are of any harsh words or painful confrontations.


	34. Zen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: unrealistic happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [day five]

It felt good.

That’s all you remember, at least for right now. It felt so good, loving Jumin. Like having the sky around you, cool breezing clouds brushing through your hair; like the sun on your skin, your back lazing over gentle green grass; like reaching for the sparkles in sky’s night, being able to touch it, able to feel it on the tips of your fingers; like love, and like rain. And like rain in summer, where it did not belong, but in which it felt so perfect. Loving Jumin, it felt like being at just the right temperature all of the time; it felt so good.

You hold this thought, this feeling of sweet memory, dearly within your heart as you go to fall to sleep, and recollect it in your waking the morning after. You know you’ve made your decision.

_“You’re going back to see him. Right?”_

_“…good luck with Jumin…rooting for you…”_

_“I believe you can find your way through this. Good luck!”_

Ah, it feels like something is still missing, but you leave your bed and pick out the black kimono from your closet – Mrs Kim must have found it and washed it for you. Mrs Kim.

_“...so enraptured, too...couldn’t bear a second without each other.”_

It sounds so nice and true. You choose to leave the kimono in the dresser, and put on a plain shirt and shorts, slipping on white socks as a final afterthought, considering the coldness of the kitchen tiles. The smell of cooking quickly greets your nose the moment you step outside with a dulled patter of your socked feet. You don’t expect it to be Jumin this time, and you’re almost entirely glad when you find that you’re right, and that it is Zen instead, with his apron, with his hair in a messy bun.

You’re quiet enough that he doesn’t notice when you pit-pat closer, starting to hear the gentle hum on his lips as he folds an egg roll over with a spatula. The tune sounds a bit upbeat, like a pop song you don’t know, and he’s so distracted that you can go all the way as to reach him and tug softly on his apron before he stops to turn and see you.

“Oh! MC!” He immediately pinches your cheek with his spatula-holding hand, and you reach in and hug him thankfully around his waist. “Zen! You know where I’m going today!” you ask with a small, dozing smile. Something about this presence and this feeling makes you all happy and bubbly inside. Something in your chest tells you Zen understands everything and loves you still, the way that both friends and lovers do.

He briefly kisses your forehead with a grin before turning back to transfer the finished egg roll to a green ceramic plate. You’re still hugging him, apparently unable to bear letting go just yet. “Yep, today’s the day!” he says, dividing the egg roll into eighths with the edge of the spatula. “You’re going to talk to Jumin, and things are going work out really good. I know it!”

The genuinity of his proud, contented smile reaches you very far, and you nuzzle your cheek into his chest, feeling so happy, so glad, and so goddamned thankful. “Zen! I’m...really really happy this morning.” You beam up at him, and he brushes your hair out of your eyes, beaming at you, too. “It’s the egg rolls, isn’t it?”

You giggle, and he puts down the spatula to pick you up and tickle you, making you giggle even more before setting you up on the kitchen countertop, like last time. “Here,” he says, like last time, picking up one of the egg rolls with a pair of chopsticks and putting it to your lips. You open your mouth and consume it, and it’s warm and nice and full of butter.

“I like it,” you say as Zen turns around to pick up the other articles of breakfast items beside the kitchen stove. “Let’s share breakfast,” he says, moving to the dining table. “We haven’t eaten together in so long, and you need some conscious rest, too, Princess. I have a lot to say about Jumin as well. Good things.” he adds, observing the slight look of confusion on your face. “Really good. Trust me.”


	35. Speak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rethinking,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> : - )

_ “The first thing I want you to know, is that Jumin really, really loves you, MC.” _

What a strange thing that was for Hyun Ryu to say.

It’s not like you expect, or even want, for Jumin to forgive you for all that you’ve done to betray that love that Zen seemed to speak so surely of this morning. As he went on to explain further, with the expression of someone exasperated by the limitations of something unsaid, your head had started to cloud with questions to yourself, about what you really wanted from Jumin after all.

You’ve had sex with Yoosung. He had been there for you all of that time, he had loved you even with all that you had confessed, and you had felt you loved him, too. After all, isn’t it impossible to be loved by someone so wholefully, so entirely, and not love them back? Yoosung loved you so much. Why didn’t you feel like your heart only belonged to him?

You had spent the night with Zen and Saeyoung. Recounting this regret to Zen, he had seemed guilty. “We shouldn’t have left so early. You seemed unwell.”  _ Unwell _ . Not an excuse. A part-reason. And reasons and part-reasons are not often excuses. You think of unwellness, of fear, and of mismatched colours of eyes. Of biting delusions and kaleidoscopic illusions.  _ Those strange, grand hallucinations of wisps and mosaic tiles had felt so real, so real to have Jumin by your side…to love him. _

_ “You love him, don’t you? I know you do. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t love good enough?” _

It’s true. It’s true; love is good, of course. But most things aren’t solved just by love, are they? Isn’t love more often the reason for solving rather than the actual solution to the disaster? You’ve already backed yourself into a dead end, and loving him won’t give you wings. At least not anymore, when you’ve fallen, like a sinner. Wrongful. Pointed right out of Eden, which is alright, really; it might be selfish of you but that apartment really does scare you now. It’s ice cold. Even with Zen there, or Mrs Kim, or the heating on full blast. You can rent a studio apartment in Goshiwon later today; you have your savings from when you had a part-time job, and when you find a stable income, you can find a less cramped-up place to stay. And you won’t ever step foot in -

Oh.

Running away isn’t a solution either, is it?

_ “Don’t end it here. You still need each other, at least to speak about all that you’ve missed.” _

Where had all that pointless optimism and energy from the morning gone off to? You were so excited before. But of course, of course. Dreams lie by your pillow. They don’t belong anywhere else. They might fog up your brain in the after-hours of slumber, but they always go away and your vision goes straight and you remember the coldness of the wind that’s outside everywhere, and the sounds of traffic you can’t hear, and the consequences of everything that has gone and might go wrong, and then all of the things you wish you could do stop feeling so good and so easy. So easy. You think of Zen’s good-bye kiss to you before you left out the door of the falling apartment. You think of the softness on your lips, and the wash of relieving stillness in your heart, still there.

You close your eyes and lean back in the upholstery.

“ Sir...please take me to C&R International…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) if i end this and my life at the same time will it count as double suicide  
> 2) that was a poor in joke taste, i'm sorry  
> 3) i rewrote this chapter entirely too many times  
> 4) i've never solved a single one of my own problems in my entire life how am i supposed to solve /this/ load of schtiff  
> 5) i've been lost in /cm/ i should be sorry for not updating but it's trailing away  
> 6) we're on the first page of results filtered by kudos/hits. heyhellyeh  
> 7) i love exams so much ha h a  
> 8) get ready for soap opera type drama next chap i do nOT know how to write non-violent arguments good luck to me fam


	36. Side Character

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fite (p1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (thank you for continuing to follow this shitty fic! i really love you all ;;)

It’s like a comedy routine, almost. Except nobody’s laughing, though it’s such an _obvious_ and _of-course_ kind of moment of the sitcom that your lips almost hint at a humoured smile between the slight blur inside your eyes. It’s _obvious_ that it would have turned out this way one turn or another. _Of course_ you had to walk in on them like that. _Of course_ this is what you deserve, after all the shit you put him through behind the scenes, behind the closed doors. You half-wish you’d left _his_ door closed, because maybe it’s easier to just hear about it later from a phone call relayed through Jaehee. _Jaehee should be on break soon._

“Jumin...Rena…”

“Miss Cha.”

She slides off the office table from her sitting position. Jumin is still in his chair on the other side. He'd looked at you for a second when you'd first entered, his face strange, not like someone caught; something else… But now he won't look at you. He won't look at you again.

“I...this. Is this... _now_ ? Uhm -” You choke on a breath and cough a few times, a little glad to be freed of your sentence for a little moment with pain. “You're, uhm...I know. It's…” _Help me. Someone help me._ No, you can't do that again. You can only help yourself. It's too messy otherwise. Don't be so selfish. Don't.

_No one help me. Leave me. Alone. God._

“J-J-Jumin…” If you say another single word, you swear you'll burst into tears like a frail dumb little doe, so you don't, you don't dare say another word, instead focusing on holding everything in, together, inside. Fuck, you must've gotten lenient after meeting Jumin. He held everything together for you, so now it's hard to do it yourself. It's hard to exercise these duties you never needed to fulfil for so long before. You shouldn't have relied on him so much...you shouldn't have fallen so hard and gotten so stupidly comfortable…

“Rena, please give us a moment.” The voice isn't particular at all. You can't read any emotion from it, and that should be scary, but you pause, stay quiet, and inside you, you know him, and you know that this perhaps means he is trying hard holding it together, too. And maybe he's not used to it, either…

She nods at him and gently places her hand over his, leaning in so that his eyes are made level with hers. She looks at him, as if giving a quiet message, of comfort or of assurance, and though his eyes are still cold, you think to yourself that this is exactly what he needs, and Rena knows this, and she is there. For him.

For a long split second, you begin to ponder what Rena might be like as a person, separate from yourself; just a person who was once a child, a teenager, now an adult with a home and a job and favourite foods and specific routes she takes to get home in the shortest time; she has her favourite piece of furniture, her favourite type of coffee, she has memories of moments she's been weak, and moments when she's been strong, moments she's been in love. Then you start to wonder what Rena might be like as a person, connected with Jumin. You wonder what she talks to him about when they're alone, or where she takes him when she thinks he needs a break, what cute look she gives him when she wants him to give her attention, how many times they glance at each other with secret grins whenever they pass each other in the halls, the innocent romance of how they first met as kids, the first time they kissed… You wonder what story they have to tell, what backstory you'll never know that would doubtlessly bind them together, so that no matter how much you will always believe your own fate with him to be stronger, the truth would be that you're wrong, wrong, and you'll never even believe it, because how could you believe something you've never seen - never _felt_ in the way that they have? And you'll be stuck, thinking that he chose the wrong girl because your sugarcoated memories of him convince you that he shouldn't have picked her, but he's so happy without you, being with her, and you'll stop being able to make excuses, you'll stop being able to tell yourself he'd be happier with you, because the proof is right there, he's -

 _Click._ Rena has left, but not really; not for Jumin, not for you.

_And how fucking shitty must it feel to go through all this trouble just to realise that this story wasn't even about you in the first place?_

_Because it was always about the childhood friends growing up together in an office, affections that weren't realised, a man who got married on a whim to a spoilt, unfaithful wife who broke his heart, a woman who he had loved more all along finally confessing, healing him, finally loving, finally together, embraced over an office table where no one else belonged._

“MC,” says Jumin; he's still not looking at you. You return with a start:

“Oh my God, I fucking hate you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (well, they said 'write what you know'.)  
> (i wrote this on my phone while listening to biosphere. it felt good. i'll write more.)


	37. Sorry/Selfish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yELL

“That’s alright,” he says. You clench your fists.

“No, it’s not. No, it’s not alright, because --”

You squeeze your eyes shut. _What was it that you wanted when you entered this room in the first place?_ You try to focus on the tingling your teeth leave on your flesh as you chew into your bottom lip. _What you want? What_ do _you want?_ _Well, first off, of course you don’t want to be alone. And you’d really like someone to hold you, right now especially, someone to help you fix this mess in your chest, or at least cheer you on to do it yourself. You’d really like some warmth right now - some safety. Someone to hug you from behind when you’re stuck at that window again, or at least to sit next to you while you wait. It doesn’t matter. What you want doesn’t matter. What you feel..._

“Jumin, I love you.” You open your eyes and he's still looking at his desk. You walk up to it.

“I'm sorry,” he says. You put your palms on the edge of the desk, elbows bent.

“And I love everyone else, too. I love Jaehee, and Yoosung, and Seven, and Zen. I love them all.”

“I know...I'm sorry,” he says.

“You don't know. Jumin, look at me.” You move your hands to reach for his face, but he moves away before you can, looking up at his own accord.

_“I know,_ ” he repeats. “I know, so please leave.”

“No, you don't.”

“ _ Yes, I do. _ ” Firmly. “ _ I know-- _ ”

“No, you  _ don't! _ You  _ don't _ know, Jumin. I love you all so goddamn much. You think I was just  _ gushing  _ with love for every human being on earth from the start? You think I could just  _ hand _ out my love for free like that? I love them  _ all _ because they  _ deserve _ it, Jumin!  _ You  _ deserve it! God, I was lonely before I met you! Before I met any one of you! Hell, you think I’d have that much free time to plan a fundraising party if I’d had any  _ friends?  _ You think I would've uprooted my life to be with you if I’d had any  _ friends?  _ You think I'm ever just having the  _ time of my life _ whenever you don't come home with any  _ friends?  _ I didn't even have anyone to invite to our  _ wedding,  _ how could you not know? How could you not know? How could you not know I was sitting by that window waiting for you all along?”

“I am sorry…”

“I don't want to wait there anymore.”

“I'm sorry…”

“But I didn't...just want to run away, either. Do you know?”

“MC.” His eyes are so passive that it makes you mad. Why won’t he  _ feel _ anything like you do? Why does he look like this now, when his expression at the sight of you walking in on him just minutes before had been so…

“Why. Won’t. You.  _ Say _ anything!” You punch your palms into the desk and the bottle of wine sitting on it tips over and spills all over your front. It’s deep red. Purple. Jumin immediately stands, his hand quickly reaching for you but stopping short, like a gaping mouth about to say something but not. His fingers close around the air and suddenly you’re reminded of your own fingers scrunched over the handle of his office door. Maybe you should’ve left it the way it was. At least then, you wouldn’t know this Jumin, this cold Jumin whose eyes won’t speak to you.

You burst into tears like an idiot. Your white shirt is so damp, the wine drips down your stomach and down your legs, and it feels funny, and gross, like someone trickly touching you everywhere and leaving berry-coloured stains wherever they had sullied. You think of odd-coloured eyes on a white rabbit. You think of words, and it sucks, it  _ sucks _ .

Jumin is bent over the table, suspended in the half-state of reaching for you but not, one hand outstretched, one in the middle of the desk. You set the bottle back straight on the desk and back away, almost slipping on the wine spilt all over the floor. “Why won’t you  _ say _ anything? Why won’t you  _ say _ anything? What are you even sorry for, you didn’t do anything wrong!”

You cover your face with your hands. “Why did you look like you were relieved to see me when I saw you with Rena…? But not like you missed me…like a deer thankful that it’s about to be put down…”

There’s a quiet sound, something like a little whine, like a strain of the voice. Maybe it was just you, or your shaky feet in the puddle of red on the ground. For some reason, you think you can feel that Jumin is shaking all over, even more than you are.

_ Say something, say something, say something, _ you beg.

“I was selfish for marrying you,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna update faster. This is the end of the MC/Jumin argument thank God. It'll be easier to write from now on plus I'm great at writing sad stuff, and that's coming right up like a fresh batch of bakery buns. Thank you to the people who commented on last chap ;; I really love reading what y'all think. It really enhances my writing experience ^^. I'm getting so close to exam season but I don't study anyway lololol I might just even finish this fic by then. Love you all so much ;; thank u 4 stickin wit me


	38. Tender is Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> most reliable character honestly

The arms that carry you are strong but tender; womanly arms that seem to waver between being fragile and being definite, but they are safe arms. They set you down onto a cold basin-like place, feeling of marble against your elbows, which slide against the basin sides. The air is cool here and easy to breathe, but muted in a private, quiet sense. You let yourself take a breath, a deep one that is audible and obvious in your frame, like a sigh except more grateful and necessary. One of the fingers coasts across your cheek, which feels cold too but still distinctly human. The finger becomes hands, which continue to submerge carefully into your scalp, fingertips swimming in earnest from your temples and forehead to the back of your head where they fasten the bundle gathered into a bun that is loose, the diversion of pain prioritised over precision.

You’re not sure whether you have been consciously keeping your eyes closed, or if the crying had dried your eyes shut for you, but you keep them that way, because the senses seem easier here. Focusing on these sensory emotions gives you such the bliss of prayer, all taking away from those troubling thoughts of what crying and screaming in the office of him.

The fingers nip the hem of your soggy shirt and you reciprocatively lift your arms over your head, letting the pungency of old wine skitter across your face as the cotton rolls away. Your bra comes off next with an easy unlatch and your arms outstretched. Your breasts touch the winter-like air and taste it with goosebumps. Your breathing is regular now. Regular since you were pulled out of the office room, falling and kicking at air.

The hands unbutton your shorts and you slide down a bit in the basin to allow them to be pulled off. Your stomach breathes well now, too. You feel her lean over you to reach for something, and water starts to pour out from the right, warm and piping. You hear some movement, a bottle of product being opened, perhaps a sponge.

When the water reaches your mid-breast, one arm reaches over to turn it off, and you decide then to take a look. Jaehee’s cheek is close to your nose, her sight affirming. The water stops running and she realises that you’re staring at her, blinking a bit before retreating back to her kneel beside the bathtub. You must be in the office’s bathroom. She must’ve carried you here all the way from his office.

“I’ll just –” She stops a bit, and you continue to stare at her, quiet as if your voice had shut off with your sight before. “I’ll clean you up.” She lifts a soapy shower scrub to your shoulder and begins to gingerly wipe at it.

“Can I –” “Ah, yes,” Jaehee pauses and picks up another scrub, offering it to you, and you take it, not about to elaborate since your words seem to be coming out as just croaks, anyway. You dip the blue texture under the water surface and scour it against your knee, which isn’t stained at all. Jaehee moves onto your back, which probably isn’t very dirty, except for the winedrops that may have travelled there while you were being carried away.

You stare at your knee.

Jaehee isn’t wearing her glasses; they’re settled on the edge of the tub, the glass becoming fogged like windows in frost, hot and cold. You swallow, then try to clear your throat in case something had been lodged there, and you try to say her name.

“Ah, MC?” Her voice has become calm.

“Y…ou should be on your break right now.” There’s a digital clock on the back wall.

You hear her smile a bit and she dips the scrub into the water first before going to your neck. “You know this is more important to me.”

“…it is…” you whisper.

“You did this for me once when I was drunk, remember?”

“Oh…ah – you were taking shots. Coffee-type ones.”

“You thought it was my birthday for some reason.”

“Saeyoung dearly misled me.”

“Oh, and Zen thought it was my birthday, too.”

“He sent you a DVD set, right?”

“A precious family heirloom.”

You chuckle.

“I thought if I got you drunk on coffee spirits, you’d suddenly become my friend.”

Jaehee looks up at you at that.  _Eh?_

You smile, distractedly scrubbing at your knee as you speak. “I thought you were so cool and nice. And that since I was lonely and you were a workaholic, we could work each other out. I was thinking that we’d be good as friends, so I tried really hard to go through all the friendship clichés to make you think I was cool too.”

“MC, you’re very cool,” she says.

You grin a bit, then turn to look at her soft serious face.

“You’re very warm, too.”

Jaehee's face becomes alight with the warmth you'd described, and she pulls back her sleeve which had unrolled a bit down her forearm before setting her elbows on the rim of the tub to lean in with a resting smile. "We'll be friends forever, right?" Something about this intentionally childlike charm resonates in both of your smiles. You nod, and Jaehee dips her fingertips into the water and makes ripples across to you, her smile then beginning to adjust to the calm. "MC…are you alright?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was a relief to write this. i keep rewriting chapters nowadays because i'm never happy with the first product. i'm not really happy with this either. i'm bad at friendly conversations unless i can put dumb kiddish jokes in there.  
> it's hard to write jaehee bc on one hand she's the reliable friend but onthe other i wish mc would bang jaehee but that defeats a lot of purposes i think
> 
> um
> 
> maybe this is irrelevant but other than exams coming up (i have trial exams rn) one of the reasons i've been writing less is that i started getting into drawing? i got a tablet in june and it's a good passer of time. i don't enjoy making visual art nearly as much as i enjoy making the literary kind, but it's an easier kind of joy, and i find myself slipping into easier satisfactions a lot these days. it's 3.11am right now and i'm glad i wrote this chapter out. i'm not sure if i'm tired or not, but i might move to my phone and answer the three comments i got. hm. i've been feeling sick in the chest these past two weeks. like i've been a angry or frustrated or annoyed and it won't go away i thought it would go away. i don't know what to do with it. i wish i could be sad instead.
> 
> good night. x
> 
> (jaehee p2 is next)


	39. Embathe

You’ve been holding her for a while now, but you’re not afraid that she’s getting wet. Her hands have laid on your bare back now, recovered from the shock of your embrace. The tips of your hair hanging loose from her bun are wet, clinging to the back of your neck the same way you cling to Jaehee’s small frame.

She doesn’t speak: you can hear her breathing and the _thump thump thump_ inside her ribcage. Both Jaehee’s and your lips are settled on the space that is shared by neck and shoulder, on each other’s skin. Jaehee probably thinks this is friendly, too. Maybe she’s not that cool. Maybe she’s more cute. Her chest heaves with yours, maybe’s she’s already forgotten that you’re near-naked as well.

“I’m going to move to Goshiwon,” you say.

“Ah…” Her speech tingles on your skin. “Doesn’t Yoosung live closeby to there?”

“Oh. Hasukjip, then.”

“Why don’t you live with me?”

_Thump thump thump._

Ah.

You twist your water-soaked fingers around in the air on Jaehee’s back, like air-piano. The material of her shirt is surprisingly thin, and you can see the light blue strap hiding underneath. She’s got it attached on the second pair of hooks. Not too tight and not too loose. You tap it like you’re playing a chromatic, a black key, a white key, a black key, a white.  _Maybe…_

“You’ll still need to talk to Jumin, though.” Your fingers freeze. “I’ll make you do it. It’s important.” Her hair touches your jawline and her lips are a bit moist with lip balm, bouncing on your skin as she propels such sentences at you that ring inside like promises of trouble you’d like to avoid. _C_ _an’t we just live quietly together?_

“You still love him a lot. That’s important, too.”

_Isn't it a bit tiring, though?_

“Of course it’s going to be hard. But maybe couple’s therapy…”

Her warm breath drifts on your skin and you shake your head; she shakes a bit with you. “No,” you say. Couple’s therapy. What a disaster of a joke. You’d surely die before you let your love for him be patched with someone else’s welding bits: wire thread and the smell of hospital-prescribed pills. Your – huh? _'_ _Y_ _our love for him'_. Ah. What a disaster of a joke you are. What a disaster. _Disaster movie_.

You kiss her neck. “No,” you say again.

“It works,” she promises.

“What do you know, Jaehee?”

She feels like she might pull away from you for a moment, but you don’t move an inch. You feel a drop of water fall on your shoulder. You think so, at least.

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t know anything at all. But it feels like you’re not satisfied…I want you to be.”

Ah.

“Then why don’t you satisfy me, Jaehee?” You cock your head to the side so that her chin falls deeper in the crook of your neck. It doesn't seem to phase her.

“Friendship isn’t enough, MC…you need the kind of love you have with Jumin.”

Ah. She’s innocent. A little bit dense. Perhaps it’s good that you’re still learning new things about Jaehee, since that’s important for a friendship. _Ah._  You tighten your arms around her. Your torso is becoming dryer now, you realise.

“You love him, don’t you?”

_It really is just hopeless._

“I do.”

It's quiet for a moment.

“Ah, I have this story, MC. It’s a bit boring, but…”

“Tell me,” you say. And when she settles, you settle, too, and close your eyes.

“Ah…I think, well…MC, when I was young, I still had both parents. They were very good to me, even though they were strict on making sure I was straight-laced, and they loved each other very much. I think I was four – I have this memory of them when I was about four, I never really thought much about their love for each other. It was always just me back then, how much they loved me… Maybe them loving each other was just so natural that it didn’t feel like it was something I needed to worry about. Maybe I was selfish, and was only worried about whether they would keep on loving me or not.”

She takes a deep breath and you feel it, too.

“One day, I did something wrong. I think I broke something, or didn’t do something I was supposed to do. I was really scared that I’d get scolded for not being a good child. I was so scared that I wanted to hide under the covers and never come out,” You feel her chuckle. “But the covers got too hot, so I peeked out and sat on the floor beside my bed and waited for them to come in. For a moment, I thought that I wasn’t scared anymore, I thought that I was brave. But they didn’t come in. It felt like days had passed, but it was probably only a few hours.”

She waits a bit.

“And so I got up and opened the door a crack. I think that I even worried that they were so tired of scolding me that they just got up and left forever. But when I crept into the hallway and peeped into the kitchen, I saw that my mother was crying. I didn’t know where my father was, he might’ve been at work or gone out to buy something. So I thought that she must be crying because she was lonely. I thought that I should go comfort her, because then she wouldn’t be lonely anymore, and she might stop crying.

“I didn’t, though. I kept thinking that she would scold me.” She smiles. “I was standing very still behind the door, watching my mother cry, and I was so scared of being scolded that I didn’t go to her. I thought about a lot of things, like how maybe if I was really good to her, she would forgive me without scolding me, but for some reason four-year-old me didn’t think that made a whole lot of sense. I…

“I don’t know what I’m saying. Um…I just…never found out why my mother was crying, but my father came home and she’d stopped crying by then, and she said something to him and he hugged her really tightly, like right now… And I never got scolded. I think I forgot all about that after a bit anyway. Dad put me to bed, and I didn’t say a word. Um…

“I don’t know why I thought to say all that. I was thinking about seeing my parents hugging so tightly. He hadn’t even seen her crying that whole time, but he was so…I don’t know…”

You pull away from the hug, and it feels a bit strange. What a strange story. “Jaehee, can I kiss you?”

“Ah – yes?…”

You kiss her on the lips, holding for a few seconds, then sit back up.

“I think I get what you mean.”

“Ah – really?”

“Well, I still don’t really –”

“Ah! I know what I meant!” Jaehee looks excited, then picks up her glasses and rubs away the fog in them, easily just like that. “The story reminded me of someone. I think I know who you should talk to now.”

“Eh – ah?”

“Come on, get changed, I’ll arrange it really quickly.”

“Jaehee? Wait-”

“Come on,” She smiles really brightly, with innocence and some sort of relief. It all feels very strange. “It’ll be fine, really!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that long-winded irrelevant-ass anecdote was 100% because i was at 500 words and didn't know how to make the chapter longer. so have a jaehee story.  
> i read this through and decided the pacing was off. doesn't mean i'm fixing it tho aylmao.  
> i have a literature trial exam in about forty minutes so i'd better leave home soon ahaha.
> 
> can you guess who jaehee's talking about?
> 
> ah (take a shot every time someone says 'ah')


	40. "Min"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> perspective woo

Jumin settles his cat onto the office desk amid the clutter of Manilla folders and fresh bull-clipped document proposals. It is 2pm. The sun, falling, is feeble and irresolute through his office windows. He stares at it, now mulling over the pitiful feeling of loss for the love he once had towards this time of day. It was the perfect light as to see you in – when that fading sun would reflect in your shining eyes, and the rays left soft highlights within the lustre of your hair. He remembers the _you_ of once ago, humming at this hour of the sun, a lofty song you remembered all the words to, but could never recall the name of.

He had loved you for that.

Now sifting his once-for-soothing fingers through that untidy hair, he drops his elbows to the wooden desk in an attempt to calm himself, failing, naturally knitting his eyebrows and tensing the muscles in his fingers and arms instead. There’s a thought on his mind: _Why is she doing this?_ He doesn’t like this thought. Elizabeth 3rd puts a paw on his head and he touches it, missing.

.

“Min?”

The voice is soft and hesitant, grasping for validation and affection.

Ah –

 _‘You need to give a little to get a little’_. That’s what the proverbial ‘they’ often say. But it’s just a simplified means of expressing the fact that earning profit most always requires careful, planned, and researched investment. Jumin Han is a master of investment activities, and he’s not known to make mistakes. But right now, Jumin Han is willing to give every current asset within his equity to be able to gain the precious freedom of a spotless mind.

 _‘You need to give a little to get a little’_ , so sure, he’ll give a little validation and affection whenever it’s prompted of him for a minute chance to forget. Any chance to forget.

 _“Miss Jun…”_ he says, quiet, his eyes intently fixed on the neglected, meaningless files, “ _come here…_ ”

The sound of her footsteps slowly grow louder, and then he hears Elizabeth’s soft purr when she is scratched behind the ears, and the _pit pat_ of her paws when she scampers away. A pair of tepid hands then touch his, moving his touch away from him and lifting his face and eyes to meet her.

 _“Are you okay?”_ she asks. Her eyes are pretty. And kind. They’re nice eyes. He turns in his chair to face her, touching her hands for contact.

His eyes trail to his side, passive.

“She was at the apartment when I went to get Elizabeth. She was wearing someone else’s clothes. They didn’t fit her properly. I am just a bit jarred.”

She frowns, as if sorry.

“Oh, Min…Jumin…”

“I’m fine.”

“You always say that, Min.”

“And that nickname won’t be sticking, Miss Jun.”

“Oh come on, Minnie. I’ve called you that since we were twelve.” She steps closer, stroking the strands of his hair, pushing it back.

“You called me that _when_ we were twelve,” he corrects. “We didn’t know each other for long. I barely recall any memories involving you.”

She pouts at that, hurt. “You’re cruel, Jumin. _I_ remember all about us.”

He closes his eyes and leans his forehead to her stomach, now more tired. “I do remember some things. You were always consistently right about things, Miss Jun, and sometimes that would bother me. You were always reliable, however. For me, that was always…good.”

She cocks her head to the side.

“Ah, did the famously cold Jumin Han just give me a compliment?”

He chuckles lightly, looking up at her.

“You like to stay on the bright side, don’t you, Rena?”

She grins; “Well, it _is_ the warmer side. You know I can’t stand coldness.’

He stops for a moment, losing his laughter, then smiles weakly, now pensive.

“I know.”

She sighs with delicacy at his brief reply, moving to place her knees on either side of his chair, kneeling in his lap. She puts her thumb to his cheek, rubbing it, trying to emulate a touch she never wholly knew. It makes him close his eyes and lean back, to recall the reasons why it made him feel.

“I don’t think she fabricated everything, Rena. I don’t think she lied to me all that time. No one can fake something like that, like a heartbeat.”

She puts her lips to his forehead, then her forehead to his, closing her eyes, too. “Min, you were still uncertain about it enough to keep your distance for so long. That uncertainty had to have sprouted from somewhere. I know you’ve always had doubts, Min.”

“What do you know, Rena?”

She pauses, her eyes turning hard and hurt with resolve.

“I know she cheated on you. I know you know it too. How do you forgive that? You can’t _really_ –”

“Rena,” he touches her cheek. “I don’t. I won’t forgive her.” He kisses her jaw. “And I won’t forgive myself.” He leans into her shoulder, feeling the meagre warmth and smelling the perfume not familiar to his nose. He wraps his arms around her, trying to maintain what little warmth there is left to hold together. _I won’t forgive her. I won’t forgive myself..._

She pulls off her violet blouse and places his hands on her chest.

“I’m the only one who really loves you, Min.”

“What do you know, Rena?” And he kisses her collar.

_...but I want to._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this in late april and have been waiting 'til now to post it. if there are any inconsistencies, that must be why. you can probably guess when this scene was set hopefully!  
> i know some people were holding onto the possibility that jumin didn't actually cheat, and that did surprise me, but, ahhh i wish he didn't either but  
> well  
> um anyway double update wooooo (although this is technically cheating huehue). a very, or should i say, V ery special character in the next chapter. it's weirdly good timing. i hope this goes well! better than my lit exam at least :----)
> 
> i can't get the claire de lune song out my head. it was on this really good independent animation...i'd better look it up hang on
> 
> -  
> o it was lewin on patreon. they make this breathtakingly beautiful bl animation series ALL BY THEMSELF. which also reminds me i was gonna become a patron for them. funny how the world goes round!! aight aight i'm off to go watch monthly girls' nozaki-kun with mah sis bai bai thank u for following i love y'all so much hope y'all can drop off a comment because any comment is validation and any validation just feeds my soul like kambucha feeds on sugar aywhatlmao love you please wear a jacket if it's cold out ok bai baidhadjsaakjdlskjkd  
> .  
> <3


	41. Gramogram Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~descriptions~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha ha hi ^^;;;

_Air. You needed this air for so long._

Jaehee had dried you up and given you a spare change of clothes – a blue tee and one of her office skirts – before giving you her card; there was a small street map drawn in blue ballpoint on the back that was meant to lead you to where he will be. You’d nodded, hugged her one last time, kissed her cheek, and left, cool air on your skin, cool air in your lungs.

The moment you step out onto the street the sun punches your eyes, and you have to blink a few times before seeing the roads and crossings. It’s not too crowded; just an array of people in different colour-pop, monochrome, business, patterned, plain, playful clothing; hair done up, let down, brushed back, sideways, buzz cut, tied back, twin tailed, curled, waved; faces smiling, sleepy, dissatisfied, excited, cold, cheerful, loving; and shoes, all scuffed and worn or new with fresh-cut tags. A woman bumps past you, all in grey, gripping her handbag tightly and speaking animatedly into a smartphone. Another walks across the street some metres away, hair in a bun, white glowing shirt with a blue stain and a paper flower above her ear, grinning like the sky; she’s holding her son’s hand. An androgynous character sighs at the crossing, gripping the straps of their backpack, throwing their head back to the sky – oh, they were just yawning.

People don’t look like ants from down here. From somewhere behind you, you hear a giggle of a couple that sound like they are holding hands.

You brush your hair behind your ear and take in a deep gulp of anticipative reassurance, letting it out slowly as you look back to the small card in your hand and follow it into the next street.

The storefront is small; you can see bright hopeful lights on the ceiling. There are fairy-lights on the walls, but they are turned off, waiting for evening and night to glow with dim weary comforts. The mood is morning-ful, but at night it will surely be warm and holding, like wool-sweatered arms. You wonder why everything needs to be described.

And there he is – the gramogram boy with blue hair and a countenance that fits right beside a constantly-in-need-of-fixing typewriter. He’s holding a warm cup of coffee, waiting for it to cool before drinking it. You approach him quickly, gladness like a wash all over your skin and body.

“V,” you say, and he turns to your sound, smiles. You wonder if you should hug him ‘hello’, but he doesn’t touch you. So you sit down next to him on the stool beside the bar, just now realising that you had never really asked Jaehee what you were meeting him for in the first place.

“MC,” he responds. He rubs his thumbs around the coffee cup – a latte, you’re guessing. “Jaehee told me you were in need of some advice…”

His voice trails off, ethereal. Soft, gentle, but clear enough to be heard and felt. You order a soda and rest your hands on the countertop.

“It’s…been one big week,” you say. It’s a bit laughable.

“How is Jumin? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

You wonder if that was meant to be ironic. The soda is settled between your palms, so you drink from it through a pink straw. “He’s good,” you say around it. “He’s…I’m not really sure. That’s the advice I need…”

You squeeze the cold glass of your drink which is fogged with iced perspiration.

“Tell me,” he says. And you tell him everything.

From the moment Jumin had left for Cote d’Ivoire to the silence by the window. From your crying with Saeyoung on the couch in darkness, your day with Yoosung at the beach – yes, your old embarrassing blushing-faced crush on young Yoosung – that regret, that kiss, that escape. Running back to Jumin’s office like a baby, hoping for quick, easy forgiveness, getting a cold surprise instead. Some doubt in your heart, some pills in your veins – did you forget to mention that? Saeran came to visit – V’s mouth opens a bit but stays quiet. The faint memory of reprimand, then waking up to Jumin – unreal, not real, untouchable. A call from her to end it all, end you. Zen and Saeyoung, a long kiss you shared with them both – a sorry, loving mistake you made in bed. The cold shower, the pincing words of sweet young Yoosung, the love you owed and wanted to give so badly. The tea that morning, the knowing goodbye. Saeyoung by your window, feeling like you might just know how to fix it all in the end. Jumin’s pale, cold face that morning, chills down your spine. Talking to Jaehee, talking to yourself, talking to Zen. Talking to Jumin…

“Ah –” Your soda glass in empty. The waitress hands you another – V had ordered it while you were spacing out. You baptise the new blue straw with a bite and begin again, wordless now. All thawed out. V reaches out his hand and pets your head, then moves his palm to your face and swipes his thumb under your eye, but you know you weren’t crying.

“MC,” he says, and you know he’s about to say something that’ll change you, a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final exams are in 12 days! My 'future' will be riding on it!  
> Sorry for not writing in so long. I've been doing other stuff, avoiding stuff, and I've really just been quite irresponsible lately. Or, forever, really.  
> I hope to write more soon, but what can I do! I'm one big liar at the best and worst of times.
> 
> I got stuff t'do! A graduation speech to write! Moby-Dick to read! !!! And this thing here, too. I want to finish before December! Wish me luck. I'll wish you luck, too! Do your best in all that you do! Thanks for sticking by! ♡


	42. [Jumin & MC & Triple-Paned Window]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 lazy 2 write so wrote 2 much dialogue instead  
> [This chapter and all chapters with titles in brackets are based in the PAST! like lil memory bits ya feel]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ay waddup it's a filler from the p a s t

“...a lot of clients are still hesitant about these windows; they don’t believe it’s a profitable investment. But see, the glass may be thicker overall when it’s triple-paned, but outside, it looks clearer than ever, like a pretty picture, on a postcard of _Seoul_..."

Jumin’s hand is stretched over the image of the cityscape on the intricately coloured window-card, his other palm splayed over your stomach, folding you in his cross-legged lap, settled on the floor in front of the full-length window.

You lift and close your fingers around his wrist, then snake them up between his fingertips, intertwining, where they seem to have always been ordained to reside. The window is cool.

“It’s not about the money, then, is it?” you ask, tilting your head so that his cheek can lean closer to yours.

His voice is soft: gentle and content; you can feel it on your neck and your ears.

“Mhm.” His hair brushes your temple. “It’s about the vacuum between the panes.” He turns his hand on the window and laces your palms together. “They keep the hot and cold in an equitable state inside. It balances, and I feel that balance everywhere.” Jumin guides the back of your hand to his lips and kisses it. “I want to keep you with me.”

There’s a small smile, one that doesn’t need to be seen, even through the window’s reflection. You pull your married hands to your own mouth, kiss his knuckles, kiss the bone on his wrist.

“Yeah,” you mumble into his hand. He pulls you closer into his chest.

“It’s safer, too,” he offers. “You’ll have three pieces of glass, soldiers to keep you from falling down.” How strange.

“I think just one glass is enough to keep me in,” you chuckle, now imagining the three panes as little soldiers blocking your means of descent. “And I’m sure you’ll be here to pull me back, anyway.”

Jumin hums at your reply and rests his bottom lip on your shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll be at the bottom,” he sounds. He’s being cryptic again. “I wish I could keep you with me.”

You turn your head so you can kiss him. “I’m not going anywhere else,” you say. He squeezes your hand.

“I want to love you,” he promises. “Like triple-paned glass.”

“And you can,” you promise back. “Just take it easy at work, okay? It makes me sad seeing my husband overworked.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah, ‘cause that means that Jaehee’s overworked, too.”

He pauses a bit, and then his laughter resounds on your skin. It’s quiet for a little bit. Then,

“MC, it’ll be your birthday soon.”

It’s strange to you at first.

“You mean in two months?”

He nods on your shoulder.

“Is there anything you’d like? I can order it from anywhere in the world.”

“Ah, do they manufacture any less-cheesy Jumin Hans anywhere else in the world?”

Jumin chuckles at that, nips your ear in part approval, part defiance. “I mean it. Anything you want. Anything at all, I’ll buy it for you.”

“Ah, but it isn’t about the money, is it?”

A huff of breath falls on you at that. His arms cross tightly around your chest.

“Unfortunately, that’s all I have.”

“You’re a poor man then, Jumin Han.”

“I’m rich with you here.”

“In your lap or in this apartment?”

He kisses your hair. You kiss his wrist.

“In my head.”

.

“Have you ever heard of an ‘imago’?”

“The idolised image of one’s lover in one’s head?”

“Yeah. I learned it from watching _Hannibal_.”

“Are you saying I don’t see the real you in my head?”

Hm. For some reason, you really want to turn around to face him, maybe to hug him or just to see his eyes. But the moment doesn’t feel right, so you only press against his arms, his grip on you loosening.

“I’m saying your head is an awfully pretty place. Can’t you need the real me a little more? Things break so easily in our heads..."

“It’s the only place I can truly keep you.”

“Ah, remember that time you suggested I go inside Elizabeth’s cage--”

Jumin whimpers.

“...Sorry…” he says.

You chuckle again, then brave a kiss to his chin. “I’ll stay in this apartment, you can keep me here,” you promise. It’s sincere. “ But I want you to take me away from this place as well, Jumin. I want to be somewhere where time doesn’t matter...where you don’t have a timetable to keep to in your diary. I want all your time, I want...ah, I want freedom, with you.”

Maybe you’ve said too much, gone a little too deep or selfish, you think. It’s really okay that he’s not home a lot anymore. It just makes these quiet little moments at 3.24am in front of the full-length triple-paned windows all the more precious in your heart. You can imagine how good being with him at sunrise or sunset would be, though. The sunrise. That would be more than precious - magic; like a tangible dream.

Jumin squeezes you tightly and buries his nose into your shoulder. He feels sad on you. You start to feel sad, too, acknowledging. His next whisper leaves a chill on your skin, a small tear in your heart. It’s said  in earnest, such a sad earnest,

“I only have so much…”

It’s okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i graduated! i didn't cry unfortunately, but i got my speech over with + got awards for englang and media (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑ but nun 4 literature bc i'm a slacky shit ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` ). Anyway, time 4 exams!!!11!!11
> 
> haha study what's that. i've been not feeling happy lately. wurt is happeeeneeeess. so i wrote this sad thing instead of tryin to force it. maybe i feel down because my lack of iron. the doctor said i was pale a while ago but i dint do anythink about it. i should look into some nutrients.
> 
> thank you so much for your comments. they really keep me alive. i love y'all ;; thank u for following this nightmarishly draggy thing of a fic. stay safe and wear a jacket if it's cold out <3
> 
> [i don't know how 2 reply to comments anymore. i'm starting to realise that i've been super extra by replying to everyone. i can't tell when i'm supposed to reply or not.... i'm......a fairure...cry....animal crossing pocket camp 2017...zzz]


	43. Epiphane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s p e l l i t o u t d u m m y y y m c

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU LOVELYRACHEL FOR BETA-ING EVEN THO UR LIFE IS BUSY

“How – are you feeling?” he asks earnestly.

You think on it. “Sorry,” you reply, lightly reflecting.

“Ah,” he says, contemplative. “A total eclipse...”

You lean into his hand, which is still on your cheek, just because it feels like the right thing to do.

“I don’t feel like the victim anymore, V. I think I’ve just realised that now.”

You take a breath of soda, looking away from his eyes, even behind his glasses.

“When Jumin was away, I was the one who chose to be alone; I could have gone out and made friends, or picked up a new hobby, but I…didn’t.”

V’s head tilts very slightly at that.

“When Saeyoung came over, I wanted to kiss him because I was lonely, and I didn’t want to handle it on my own – not because I really loved him more than Jumin at that moment.

“And, and that time with Yoosung at the beach, I’d wanted to lean on someone again. And I was thinking of all the gone possibilities of if I had gone on Yoosung’s route, so I wanted to see if it would work, but it didn’t. I should have known it never would have worked. If I really loved Yoosung, if I’d really respected him, I wouldn’t have thought twice about choosing him in the first place. But I didn’t, and I didn’t, and I didn’t…

“And I should have gone into Jumin’s office that time, even though he said to close the door. Because I suddenly had all of these questions and doubts, and closing the door only made them fester. I chose to feel sorry for myself over trusting Jumin to have answers. That was selfish of me.

“And – and Saeran…maybe that wasn’t my fault, but I chose to be weak. I probably couldn’t have stopped it either way, but I wish I had been a little bit stronger, and less dependent. I know that now. And also…I’m glad it happened. I think I needed someone to call me out, even if it was Saeyoung’s deluded brother, while…drugging me…I guess...

“And I should have called Jumin’s number back after what Rena said, and...and that time afterwards, even though I was drunk and half-drugged, I know I was still some part of myself, and that part of myself still wanted people to lean on for comfort – to feel good.

“I should have stopped there. I knew I was wrong, but… Yoosung is too kind. And innocent. That may be why I couldn’t choose him. He…never saw the wrong in me… And I didn’t want to be wrong and face the consequences, so I ate up his story, and I lied to the both of us. And I told myself that I owed Yoosung my love, but I didn’t; I just wanted to give it to him, because I knew he would love me back so easily. I was really in on myself. I guess I still kind of am…”

You touch V’s hand, still cradling your cheek.

“I shouldn’t have lied to Saeyoung about what happened with Saeran. That’s something…I really am sorry for. It’s already bad enough for him the way things are. I can’t let him live…in another lie. And it wasn’t my choice whether or not to tell him, because it wasn’t only about me. I’ll tell him what happened with Saeran. Maybe today, I don’t know when. But he has to know. He has more right than I do.

“And that morning when I saw Jumin...I don’t know. I wish I’d held him back better. I wish I’d talked to him then. I was still weak. I should have been stronger, and made him talk with me about it. I could have – we could have...maybe solved it all. It maybe could have been okay if I hadn’t been so weak.

“I don’t know why I became so elated after finding those papers by the typewriter. I think...I was hiding in some sort of dream-land. It felt good, and it gave me confidence, but...I was lying to myself, I think. There was nothing really all too especially bad about it, but...it made me falsely believe that everything had just solved itself and that all I needed to do was to see Jumin’s face and it would all be okay, but…

“I was a mess, by my own ill-conceived design. All I could do was yell and cry, and it didn’t solve anything...if that was even possible in the first place. And now I’m here. And I’m hoping you or Jaehee or anyone could solve all this for me, but I know that I don’t deserve it. I know that I’ve made my bed, and it’s time to lie down and live with it. I know giving up is cowardly, but...I think it’d be easier on everyone, especially me, if I moved away. Leav-leaving people...isn’t all that hard in the end. At least my heart would feel lighter, I guess, if I knew I’d untangled the strings by pulling them apart.”

V shakes his head, and you dearly hope that you don’t look pitiful. It’s all you could do now, to be strong in some way, even cowardly.

“I don’t want it to be messed up anymore. Everyone will forget eventually, including me…”

V doesn’t say anything, even though you’re hoping he would. The selfish part of you is still hoping for a ‘please don’t go’ or ‘Jumin never actually cheated on you, it was all a big funny misunderstanding’ or even a – ‘you can lean on me, I’ll take care of you’. Your heart is beating, anticipating the nothing, until his hand leaves your cheek, slipping from your fingers, and V grabs your shoulders and pulls your face towards his.

Your eyes widen with the nimble movement that you hadn’t expected from someone so usually verbal – his face gets closer, you can almost see his eyes clearly now, and – he hugs you, tightly, his chin on your shoulder and his arms on your back. It’s a cool-feeling hug, because the cafe was very-well designed for all seasons, and was neither too hot nor too cold – just comfortable. The nylon of his dark green coat is texture between you, and you don’t have the heart to hug him back before he tells you –

“You’re still being selfish. I love you, like Yoosung did and Saeyoung and Zen did, but I know you’re still being selfish. You need to be a different kind of selfish. A brave selfish. You’re a phobic selfish right now; you feed yourself by avoiding your problems, but you have to change and live by demanding what you want, even if it’s risky, even if he might not love you anymore, because there’s still a chance that he does, and you should be so selfish as to ask him to, because maybe that’s what he needs now most as well.”

He pulls away, and somehow now, even without any ray of sunlight shining over his glasses, you think you can see his eyes entirely; a beautiful, fading, brilliant blue.

“You – you seem...to know everything, V.” Perhaps your eyes are a bit blue now, too.

“Not really. I heard it from someone else.”

You furrow your brow. “From who?” V smiles.

“Who else? It’s that husband of yours; he is always stuck in his own head and heart. The two of you are one and the same.” He chuckles at it, but you don’t feel like he’s teasing. You think about these words – one and the same – and your conclusion makes you sad.

“But I don’t know anything about Jumin,” you admit. “Even now, I don’t know what he’s thinking. Doesn’t that mean I’ve failed somehow?”

V stops, then pauses for a long time, as if in a stream of thought and consciousness. His eyes are pensive, perhaps wondering if what he plans to say next is suitable at all. Then, all at once, as if decided, he leans in a bit, like he’s about to tell you a secret in whispers.

You hurriedly lean in, too.

“Listen closely,” he instructs now, firmly serious. “I want you to go for a walk somewhere, for the rest of the day, at least until noon, and then go home, and open up your typewriter.”

There’s something like a conspiracy to his words, and the more you overthink it, the more confusing it gets. Then, he adds, quite unhelpfully, like a crossword puzzle hint: “Luciel says that it rustles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I AM THREE WEEKS INTO GRADUATE LIFE AND I'VE ALREADY CRIED LIKE EVERY DAY AND HAD ONE (1) NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS ABOUT THE REALITY OF FRIENDSHIPS BUT I'M DOING noT GREAT YAY BUT I WROTE THIS AFTER 4 ATTEMPTS I SWEAR I DON'T JUST SIT AROUND 100% OF THE TIME NOT WRITING (I SIT ARONUD 200% OF THE TIME HA HA)  
> ANYWAY HERE IS A DISAPPOINTING CHAPTER I'M SORRY IF IT WAS PREACHY I JUST KEEP PROJECTING IN THIS FIC BUT
> 
> ANYWAY THANK YOU FOR THE COMMENTS AGAIN I SERIOUSLY  
> THANK YOU  
> I WOULDN'T WRITE THIS WITHOUT Y'ALL  
> I LOVE Y'ALL  
> Y'ALL
> 
> ALSO MY NEW PERSONAL MEME IS TELLING PEOPLE TO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE WHENEVER I AM SOMEWHERE THAT IS NOT MY HOUSE  
> AND SAYING " SHUT UP, YOU CRETIN "  
> personal misconduct asides, i'm really sorry for not churning these out faster. i'm not a very motivated person ever but i'm hoping to end this fic by the end of the year (hahah i bet that statement becomes a hilarious joke in future context) but yup thank you for sticking around especially if you were here since the state because DUDE WE'VE BEEN TOGETHER LIKE A WHOLE YEAR FAM I THINK WE HAVE THIS CONNEXION NOW, YAH FEEL
> 
> yes


	44. [Christmas Special!]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not beta'd yet!
> 
> this chapter is set BEFORE this fic's story starts, so during the early stages of Jumin and MC's relationship/marriage!
> 
> [I'd initially intended for this fic to not have a clear time period (as in it could be set in the first week of July or during the winter solstice or whenever you like), so you can just retcon this chapter in your head or something if you'd like!]
> 
> Merry Christmas! Please enjoy!

“Psh! Quick!” You run out from the hallway, crouching low for speed, skilfully sliding the secret package underneath, then quickly scamper to the space behind the couch, which has been pushed out of its usual space at a large, perhaps 98-degree, angle.

You turn, and Jumin smiles from beside you, panting, having reached the back of the couch first. You smile back, then notice that his hair is sticking up over the top, and instinctively and immediately reach out to shove his head down low as to not give your position away.

“M -- !”

You pull his face to your chest and cover his mouth with your hand. He struggles a bit, but you don’t give out. The two of you cannot be seen, at all costs.

Jumin’s face grows warm in your hands. Ah, if you looked down right now, he’d probably be blushing, and it’d probably be really cute. But there’s no time for that! This is serious business! You close your eyes, relaxing your muscles, listening hard for that tell-tale sound…

_ Pit pat, pit pat. _

It’s her!

You let go of and shove Jumin out of the way so that you can turn around and peep up from the top of the couch at your target, and Jumin, seeing you do this, quickly follows suit.

_ Quiet, quiet... _

The snowy white paw makes nonchalant steps upon the cool floor, approaching the package like a very high-class tap-dancer on the forth show of the tour (which is usually one of the most impressive shows of the tour, where the tap-dancer has had the chance to become accustomed to stage life, but also the charm of performing has worn off a bit, so, although skillful and still energetic enough, the amount of care and passion just isn’t quite the same).

You bite your lip as the paws get closer to the object, then…then reach for it…then…

_ Scratch, scratch, _ Elizabeth paws at the object before turning and trotting away, back to the kitchen where her home-cooked breakfast is waiting.  _ Well, at least she’s eating what we spent the best part of the 4am – 6am period making for her. I think. _

You rest your back against the couch and slouch your muscles in a big sigh. “I guess it’s just not our year, Jumi – uh, Jumin?”

Jumin has his face in his hands, shaking his head.

“Red…God, I  _ know  _ she doesn’t like red, but I still…I wanted it to be –”

“Christmassy,” you finish together ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

“It’s okay, Jumin,” you assure. “Maybe – maybe she’ll be into it later when she’s in the mood.”

“No...I think it was the lavender smell we daubed onto it. That was definitely it. I should have anticipated the looming possibility that her affinity for the lavender scent was merely…” Jumin gasps and brings his knuckle to his lips, “…a phase.”

“Jumin!” You throw your arms around him. “She grows up too fast...but that’s okay. She still knows we love her, right? Yeah?”

He holds you back and nods against your shoulder. “You’re right, MC. And, oh — right.” He leans forward a lot, and you can feel one of his arms reaching for something behind you as he effectively tips your over in his strain for what seemed to be half a kilometre away or something.

“Ah!”

He finishes struggling and addresses you (you’re still on the floor at this point) with a red-wrapped package in his fingers.

“Your present.”

“Jumin!” You grab his shoulder to pull yourself up. “I told you not to buy me anything.”

He hides his proud smirk behind the wrapping paper, like a main antagonist about to reveal the ingenious method that they had used to capture the protagonist, except he’s also a little bit shy, because he’s worried that there might have been a small mistake in his process that the main protagonist might notice but not point out because they’re too polite (or because their mouth is covered, you choose).

He closes his eyes in humblebrag notion. (Wait, now he looks like a character from one of those cooking animes who is about to talk about his ingenious recipe process — and he’s not even shy about it anymore!)

“Well, I didn’t  _ buy _ you anything.” You can almost hear the ‘HAHA! YOU FOOL, YOU THOUGH I WOULD NOT FIND A LOOPHOLE IN YOUR CONDITION AND CONSTRUCT A PERFECT WAY TO GIVE YOU A CHRISTMAS GIFT EXPRESSING MY LOVE?!’ at the end of the sentence. It makes you giggle. He giggles, too. Giggle party.

Jumin gives you the parcel, which you squeeze it curiously.  _ Soft. _

“I — didn’t want to buy a box for it since that might count as buying something. And the wrapping paper was borrowed from Jaehee. I did learn to wrap it on my own, though. There were many YouCylinder videos online.”

Your cheeks instantly flush pink. You might just die at his nervous over-compensating face right now. But you’d better open the parcel first.

You tear it open as delicately as possible while Jumin watches with wide eyes (he’s trying to play it off casually, though).

Wool. You rip away the remaining paper and lift up the red and green Christmas sweater. Your mouth falls open.

“I...paid for an online class to learn how to make it, though,” he adds, a bit nervously. You can feel tears starting to line your cheeks. The knitwork is scarily beautiful and skilled, the letters for “MC JUMIN” lining the top and “ELIZABETH 3RD” on the bottom. A Christmas tree perfect in the middle. You hold the sweater close to your heart.

“MC?” He’s noticed your tears, but your face quickly turns into a smile, then outright laughter. You reach over the couch and pull a parcel from under the cushion, wrapped in Jaehee’s red and white-spotted wrapping paper, and throw it at him.

He opens it in confusion, then slowly lifts up an almost identical (though differently sized) red and green Christmas sweater up to the light.

“MC...oh my God…”

“I’m sorry it only says ‘MERRY’ on it. I ran out of white wool and ‘Christmas’ is too hard to knit, anyway. Sorry it’s not —”

Jumin looks up at you with a dead serious expression on his face and turns the sweater around to show you the cat you’d knitted on the front. “It’s Elizabeth,” he says. You laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“You’re a genius, MC. The teacher I had only did Christmas trees…”

“Yeah, mine t — wait...was your teacher a tall guy named ‘Carl’?”

“Yes, how did you — wait…MC, did we have the same —”

You leap up and hug him, still laughing (a bit hysterically, now).

“It’s crazy! It’s — hahah! It’s a Christmas miracle!”

You can hear Jumin smile, too. “I love you.”

“ _ Me too! _ ”

The doorbell rings.

Jumin looks up at the door. “Ah, they’re here,” he says. A very small, almost playful grimace as he adds, “Early.”

You laugh and stand up. “At least the food we made won’t get cold! Ooh, we’d better put these on real quick. Elizabeth might steal them otherwise — I had to knit it at Jaehee’s house to avoid her stealing my wool. Elizabeth — not Jaehee.”

You lift the sweater over your head and Jumin helps you pull it down as he chuckles.

“I started knitting it during meetings after Elizabeth kept pushing the wool bundle away from me. The clients were surprisingly understanding.”

You laugh and pull his sweater down for him, too.

“It looks great on you,” you grin.

“It is pretty lit.”

“Oh my God.”

You chuckle all the way to the door, Jumin in tow. The door handle is warm like the fireplace, and the faces that were waiting behind it are warm, too.

“Merry Christmas!” says RFA.

You grin with Jumin. Elizabeth makes an appearance, too.

 

_ “Merry Christmas!” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when i said i wanted to finish this fic before the end of the year? :---)
> 
> sorry for not updating! i was writing the chapter where mc is at the park, but then i thought it might be nice if i didn't write one, because depending on the reader, a trip to the park can involve very different thoughts and things! so what would you do in the park after some strange conversation with v? ehh?? maybe i'm just a lazy writer haha.
> 
> i will try my best! thank you for your patience, and i love you for everything! this is a bit late for a chrismas special (it's 9.20PM in melbourne) but i hope you enjoyed my word vomit. i really didn't keep formalities writing this. everything is all over the place and it's cheesy and lame but it was really easy to write so -- yeah!
> 
> <3


	45. Typeset

When the door swings open, your body runs on its own to the bedroom where you last left the typewriter.

The apartment should be cold from being abandoned so often this week, but somehow it's warm again like it used to be, and the air pushing against you in your rush almost feels like being touched and held in brushed strokes.

The typewriter --

You reach it, and the thing is smooth and cold, exactly as you had left it two days ago. You grasp the sides, knowing it would be heavy, and lift it up anyway, somehow managing to bring it to your right ear and shake it a bit.

V was right; it does rustle. And it sounds like --  _oh  -- fuck_

 

It almost lands on your toes but you'd instinctively jumped away from it and now it's... broken.

What a horrible sound for something once so precious to make. Like a car crash, like keys and crumples and, if you want to be poetic, like broken bones of a rib-cage crushing the lungs and the heart. At least that was what it had felt like. Had felt like.

How many hundred times had you and Jumin each taken turns to repair the already-broken thing? It may have been easy to have been hopeful about it when you first saw it, sitting naively on that plastic flea market table, metal bits sparkling like a grin in that nostalgically shining sun. But two times, a dozen, a million more, and fixing it was just a pitiful formality. What was the point, you wonder now. The thing was bulky and hard to take out, and ink would always get everywhere whenever you used it, so what was even the benefit of taking care of it when it posed no use for either of you? When it needed to be fixed more than it was wanted to be used.

You kneel on the floor now, hovering wavering fingers over the little pieces now strung about in a little faltering heap.

_I can't write anything on you anymore._

You run a finger over a broken edge, which is cool and grooved.

_But we fixed you so many times._

You pick up the piece, hold it in your palm.

_But we cared for you like we cared for each other._

You turn your palm and let the remnant fall back into the pile.

_I guess whatever V was hinting at, it's broken now. There's no fixing it anymore. It's really gone. It's_

Your hand flies to your mouth as you let out one loud, horrible sob.

_Oh, God. Oh, God. It's really_

Your eyes blur over, stinging your skin, so sensitive from five pathetic days of tears and uselessness. You tighten your hand over your mouth. Your sobs come from deep within your chest, convulsing; paralysing your breath for a split moment with ever sharp constriction.

You use your other hand to hold yourself up on the floor, your body cowering over the broken mess of black plastic and silver metal.

_God, God, God, God, God. If you're really there. Oh, God. Please put this all back together. I'm so sorry I was careless. I should have held it tighter. I shouldn't have shaken it like that. I know it was a  stupid silly hopeless broken useless little thing, but --_

The hand on your mouth falls onto the floor as well as your breath strangles in your throat.

_"I wanted it to be good."_

You let out a few more strangled sobs before noticing that ink is just now beginning to spill over the carpet. You quickly run your fists across your eyes before sifting through the mess to look for the leaking cartridge, worried that the stain might not go away even if you scrub it. Something sharp skims your thumb and you wince, grabbing the chunk of rubble and setting it aside quickly before stabbing your thumb into your mouth. The corner of some paper is stained, too. Who put paper in the typewriter?

Who -

Who put paper  _inside_ the typewriter?

You bite the cut on your thumb before removing it, picking up the paper - it's thick, and it's, actually an envelope.

It's actually six envelopes.

In six different colours.

There's a little handwritten card on top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a very inky inkwriter


	46. >Start

You recognise the handwriting immediately.

It only has a single date scrawled on it -- a Tuesday two weeks ago, nothing else. You run a finger across the familiar fountain pen ink, then set the card aside to consider the six envelopes across your lap.

One green, one yellow, one silver, a red, a blue, and one last one.

You can almost feel the personalities, the smiles and the voices of each individually-coloured message, and just when you pick up the very first, a shimmering of rain begins outside.

Your heart almost smiles. You open it with most delicate fingers. Your eyes surely sparkle.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are about to get.


	47. Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> subversive.

You're out in the rain, where the streets are empty of people, all having rushed home to warmth and safety long ago. Your feet are bare, but the asphalt doesn't hurt. Sometimes a car zooms by and it makes a comforting loud noise before shrinking into vanishing point.

It had taken you a lot longer to read all the letters than you'd anticipated. There were too many parts that you had to stop and put down at, and too many passages you had to re-read over and over again. The final envelope's contents had wrung your heart in a solemn, broken sort of way. But the first...

You walk into the middle of the road. Maybe there will be no cars here for the rest of this day. You look up at the sky from the middle, the rain-lines showering downwards, all around. It almost feels like you're in some cheap drama. Cheap, and too emotional, and too real to really take in.

That first envelope, green like a metaphor attached. Your heart churns; you don't know how you're allowed to feel.

"You'll get a cold, you know."

The rain stops falling on you as a sun drifts over your vision. You follow the source, and it's him, Yoosung, in a bright-coloured scarf and a clear umbrella, with a yellow sun painted in acrylic in the middle. You're almost even surprised for a moment.

"Seven told me," he says. "He said you've read the letters. Follow me."

He begins turning, but stops when he notices your absence of shoes.

"Ah. Would you like a piggy-back ride?" he asks. You shake your head.

"You should at least wear my shoes, then," he says, beginning to slip off one of his sneakers. You shake again. "It's okay, I won't get hurt; I'll still have my socks." He grins positively, eyes closed and shining unapologetically.

"Yoosung, that's gross," you say quietly, thinking of wet socks.

"Ah!" He smiles again. "She speaks. Come on, then, let's go look for an open shoe store." He offers you an arm, and you're compelled to take it.

"The letters," you begin, after a little bit of walking. You don't know what to say next.

"Yeah." There's an awkward spring in his step, and a shyness in his voice. "It's a bit embarrassing, really." He chuckles. "After a while, I'd just assumed that you'd never read them, so...I just wrote everything that came to my mind without thinking. I'm sorry if it was weird. I don't remember everything I wrote..."

"It was nice..." you whisper, and this gets his attention. "Was it really?" His smile is a sunshine, and the spring in his step grows stronger. "I've been trying to get better at writing, since I've noticed you've been reading this story quite a bit." He stops. "Ah, here we are."

The girl behind the counter at the shoe store offers her help, but Yoosung insists on being the one to help you pick out a pair of shoes.

"Hm, depending on how this day goes, you might need a different pair of shoes."

You look up at him quizzically, and he only smiles at you again.

"You can't go wrong with sneakers, though."

Yoosung helps you try on a few pairs, taking advantage of the busy work of untying new shoes as an excuse to look away from you as he speaks, ears red. You still have a hundred questions swivelling in your head as you sit gingerly on the bench, Yoosung on the floor attending to your feet. But none of these questions seem to be able to be materialised into words, or even whole concepts, so you keep them all up inside, barely registering any of Yoosung's words amidst your trains of thought.

"...and that's how all of this turned out like today, really," he finishes. "Are these too tight?"

You try to hide your blank expression by nodding, then realise the question and quickly switch to shaking instead. Yoosung looks back down and squeezes the tip of the shoe. "It's a bit small, yeah." He helps you take it off.

"You've been through a lot this week, so I don't blame you for being a bit quiet," Yoosung says as he helps you into another pair. "I think I can speak for all of us and say that we're all a bit sorry...maybe a lot. We should have realised how much you were under a lot sooner. It was really rather selfish, now that I think of it a lot more. I guess things just fell into place in the worst ways possible. I'm sorry for that." He ties the laces. "I want to promise to be better for you, to know what you need and talk things through with you a lot more, instead of rushing and making assumptions. How do these feel?"

You flex your toes in the new, grey pair.

"Good," you say.

Yoosung smiles. "We'll take them." He hands the clerk his debit card.

You’re filled with a bit of dread, remembering you hadn't brought your wallet with you, either. "Yoosung, you shouldn't -"

'"Hey," he says. "I wanna be able to be your _oppa_ , too. Let me do things for you."

"That’s not..." you say.

"Isn’t it okay to work like that?" Yoosung takes your hands in his, still kneeling in front of you. "How about it, MC? I like you, so do you like me? Do you want to spend this route with me, this future with me, and sometimes let me be your _oppa?"_

The air stills for a bit; you’re suddenly washed with a feeling of wonder.

...

>> CHOOSE: CHOICE YOOSUNG OR MOVE ON???

>> TO CHOOSE 'CHOICE YOOSUNG', CONTINUE BELOW

>> TO CHOOSE 'MOVE ON', PROCEED TO HEADING FURTHER BELOW

...

" _'Oppa'...’oppa’_ is strange," you say. You pause for a bit, then link your fingers with his. You stare at your shoes with a softly growing rosiness in your face. "But...I like it, too."

Yoosung's uncertain expression turns into a sudden wide, heartfelt grin. "MC!" He buries you in a hug, then a kiss. "I love you so much. Will you marry me?"

"That's moving too fast, Yoosung," you say.

"I'm serious. I'll work hard for a 10-carat diamond ring!"

"That's not a… Ah...just...something simple...is okay in the end..."

He pulls from the hug to look at your face. "Is that a 'yes', then?" His purple eyes are wide and shining again. You briefly wonder where all of that mature character development from earlier had gone, but it doesn't really matter after all. This is a badly written story, but it's what you'll take, apparently.

"I'm hungry," you say, attempting to shift the subject matter. "Buy me rice cake...oppa _._ "

"Yes! Rice cake! I'll even buy you barbecue."

He holds your hands in his so seriously and earnestly at that, eyes genuine and naive and excited.

_Dammit._

"I...I want...homemade kimchi, too...and matcha tea."

"I'll make it every day for you!"

_Dammit, dammit, dammit._

"Yoosung, let’s go home already. I miss it there."

"Ah - of-of course, MC!" Yoosung swiftly picks you up, collects his debit card and receipt for tax purposes, then rushes out of the shop, out into the raining street again.

"Ah," he says in a different tone, looking up at the rain. He turns around for his umbrella, but you open it up in your hands; the sun appears over your heads once more.

"D’you reckon we'll be that cheesy couple that says 'honey, I'm home' every day?" you bring up as he begins the journey home.

"I can already think of a bajillion other instances I can appendage the word 'honey' onto every sentence, sweet-lovely-darling-adorable-very-passive honey."

You laugh. It’s comfortable and cool and safe even though it’s raining and getting windy. Yoosung holds you dear; you feel it. And there are a million, trillion things that you have to think about now, things that you need to sort out, even more things that can go wrong and horrible and regrettable. But amidst the patter of the rain, and beneath the small universe under your shared sunshine umbrella, you can see Yoosung's eyes, and there are tears in them, too, and you know that everything will be difficult and unsure, but at least it will be alright.

  
>> [YOOSUNG GOOD END: FIRST LOVE] <<

 

>> CHOICE 'MOVE ON'

The world stills and you're aware of what is right, even though it hurts to know.

"Yoosung," you say. "I can't."

You don't cry this time, but he does, just those soft little droplets tugging on his brown lower lashes. You want to add 'I love you so much', but you know this time that it will only make things worse.

"You'll be happier soon." You touch the corner of his eye and feel the teardrop wet the pad of your thumb. He smiles and closes his eyes, his hands loosening around your wrists and leaning in to your touch. He looks calm, like he's telling his senses to do their best to take all of this last moment in. Yoosung takes one big breath, a sort of comforted sigh, and you wonder if you will, too. "Maybe," he says, then he gets up.

"Thank you, MC. Now come on, I have somewhere to take you." He offers his hand, and the expression on his face is now cheerful despite being tear-stained. "It's all part of the big plan," he smiles assuringly. You take his hand.

"The shoes," you say.

"Don't worry about the shoes. Let me at least give you those and nothing else." Yoosung guides your arm around his as he waves goodbye to the clerk and leads you outside. You open the umbrella and he insists on holding it as you walk further and further away from the apartment, where you’d initially thought he was going to take you.

"Where are we going, Yoosung?" you ask after a while, but the cafe's light is already cascading over you in the way that the rain atop the umbrella could not. It’s reasonably crowded in there, full of a common warmth and homely chatter. You turn back to look at him unsurely.

"I guess I could take you inside, too," he says thoughtfully.

It’s like a soft toaster. There's a small bit of bustle, but you can still hear the light jazz quite well from over the murmurs, and you quickly spot a familiar face sitting at a two-seater by the rain-freckled window.

Yoosung leads you to her, and she smiles, nodding to the seat opposite.

"That's my cue to leave, isn't it." Yoosung looks a bit hesitant to let go but unlatches from you anyway. He takes off his scarf and laces it around your collar as one final touch. "Take it,” he says, although it's already on you. "I don't need it. It's cold outside. You take it," you say. He shakes his head. "Give it to Jaehee if she needs it, then." He kisses your forehead. “I’ll see you next time ‘round. Take care, MC.”

Yoosung brushes his hand past your shoulder when he walks away. You look back and settle down in your assigned chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to upload it with Yoosung's letter at the bottom but I'm worried it'd take too long to write the letter so I'm just uploading this as is. I'm sorry to @jacksonswang for not uploading sooner. My reply was supposed to be very incredibly hilarious since I really wanted to write this chapter right after replying that but -- i'm a dummy.
> 
> anyway, not that it matters, but uni starts next week and i already want to not  
> also i've got three other works in the (well) works that i'm dying to write and upload and they are:  
> > tododeku very weird very ooc semicrackfic  
> > kagehina tragic abuse fic  
> > haikyuu mafia au/mystery fic  
> i hope they sound exciting to somebody i dunno ahh anyway
> 
> the end thanks for sticking by. love you lots.


End file.
